A Nightmare on Elm Street 7: Welcome Home
by Happy-Phantom-Girl
Summary: SNOPSIS: When the daughter of a physiatrist moves to Springwood she doesn't believe in the rumors, but her nightmares are making her a believer. Picking up where Freddy's Dead left off! New twists that will leave you guessing!
1. NOTICE Read First

NOTICE

SNOPSIS: When the daughter of a physiatrist moves to Springwood she doesn't  
believe in the rumors, but her nightmares are making her a believer.  
Picking up where Freddy's Dead left off! New twists that will leave you  
guessing!

Formerly "Nightmare on Elm Street 7: Don't fall Asleep", "Nightmare on Elm  
Street 7" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street: Welcome Home"

NOTE: This fic is Rated R for Violence and Strong Language

FAQ:  
Question 1:  
Nightmare song incorrect?  
"Chapter 4"  
This chapter reviews Nightmares by Melissa Keller. In them she is having "Flashbacks" or is being "Haunted" by the past. In doing so, the "Freddy's  
coming for you" Song sung is the song before Krueger's death used to torment his victims before their death as he played a deadly game of "hide and seek". Only after his death and haunting the dreams of his victims did the other lyrics take place. You will notice in later chapters the lyrics  
are the originals.

Question 2:  
Characters from "Freddy's Dead"? So far the story only has "Maggie" from "Freddy's Dead". In this Fiction all of what happened in "Freddy's Dead" was only in "Maggie's" head. I take in to consideration that all the other characters were there as well. As for "Tracy" or "Doc" making a cameo or "Maggie" playing a more key role, this may be a possibility at a later time.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with any of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" writers, producers or creators. The following is an original work based on  
the Characters created by Wes Craven. All right reserved.


	2. Prologue

Prologue  
  
She opened her eyes with a start. The white padded walls around her secured her suspicions. "No!" she cried. "It wasn't a dream! I know it wasn't! I killed him! I know I did!" She stood and went to the window. She banged on the door. "Hey! Help!" she called to passing nurses. She backed away as one came and unlocked the door.  
  
"I killed him!" she continued.  
  
"Dr. Keller!" the nurse called.  
  
"But I did! He thought he could stop us but I killed him. I did." A female doctor rushed down the hall and opened the door. She went to the frightened girl who lunged towards her.  
  
"Maggie, your fine; I promise." Dr Keller said to the woman.  
  
"But I killed him." she pleaded.  
  
"Yes Maggie. We know. Just calm down,"  
  
Maggie settled back into her corner as the doctor removed the light from her pocket and flashed it in her eyes.  
  
"He couldn't win. I made sure he couldn't win. I killed him." Maggie continued.  
  
"Is she going to be okay?" the nurse behind her asked.  
  
"Her medication is working." The doctor said checking her pulse. "She is coming back to us."  
  
Maggie looked over to the doctor. "What?"  
  
"Nurse Morgan. Take Maggie back to her room. Make sure she is settled before leaving her." Dr Keller stood and let the nurse and two orderlies come in and assist with removing the weak Maggie. Another doctor came to the hall and waited as Dr Keller secured the room empty and shut the door.  
  
"What's that case." he asked watching the nurse sit Maggie in a wheelchair and gave her a small paper cup of water to wash down a couple of pills.  
  
"She is one of my oldest cases." she said. "Maggie Burroughs has been here since she was 5. She is a survivor."  
  
"huh?" the man asked.  
  
"In Springwood. It was years ago. Almost 40 years. The Krueger murders." The man nodded.  
  
"What happened to her?"  
  
Doctor Keller motioned for the man to follow her to her office. Once inside she sat behind her desk as the man followed sitting on the opposite side.  
  
"Maggie's mother was murdered when trying to defend her daughter from her kidnapper. Fred Krueger had been on a killing spree in the town. Lots of children went missing. But you must be familiar with that already." The man nodded. "Well he was brutal. He left Maggie alive and alone with her mother's dead body. Maggie promised him she wouldn't tell what happened, but soon after another kid was killed and he was caught. The police followed him back to his hide out, an old power plant at the edge of town where they found the bodies of murdered children. Her mother was suspected to be the first adult to be killed. Rumor is Maggie wasn't killed because the cops showed up. She was given to social services at first. It wasn't a pretty site. She insisted that she could see his face every time she fell asleep or even closed her eyes. She was completely traumatized."  
  
She handed the man a folder which he glanced at while she spoke. "She was transferred out of Westin Hills hospital to us soon after his own murder. She was okay until the transfer that was here 10 years ago."  
  
"The dream outbreak."  
  
"Exactly, she heard about it from a transfer from Westin Hills Psychiatric Hospital. Poor boy tried to cut off his own eyelids to stay awake. He told her about his nightmares and since then she has built a world inside her head. It's like a movie. She stairs into space, flinching as her mind makes her see everything that is happening. We started her on a medication however which we are hoping will bring her back to reality. She is killing her delusion. It will be hard to realize that her life has been a nightmare and in reality she has been here with us. She is one reason why my research is so important. It is important that I find a way to solve these night terrors and episodes as soon as I can."  
  
"What are Maggie's delusions?"  
  
"In Maggie's mind Springwood is childless, deserted, and miserable. The residents are insane. What she doesn't know is it's the other way around. She is the one who is here with us. She gets violent on occasion and acts out her dreams on herself, inflicting injuries on herself and insists that Fred Krueger is hurting her, when we see her physically do it to herself. But now that her medication is taking effect all we need is to give her time."  
  
"How is Springwood?"  
  
"Fine actually. Nothing has happened in Springwood since then. After the Parker girl died it all stopped."  
  
"But I thought there was another incident. A girl named Alice."  
  
Dr Keller nodded.  
  
"It was rumor. Alice Johnson was a friend of Kristen Parker. She took her death hard. Most of her friends did. There were a few deaths but it was all circumstantial. Nothing to relate them to the dream outbreak although many said otherwise. Truth is, when you actually looked at it they all related to something in life. One girl dies of asthma attack, another side effects from intense work out, anorexia, warehouse accident, and motorcycle accident. It was all circumstantial."  
  
"And Alice?"  
  
"Alice and her son Jacob live in Springfield."  
  
"So she moved?" the man noted turning the page on Maggie's file.  
  
"She moved for educational purposes. Alice had a child out of wedlock while having just graduated high school. Her chances for college were slim, so she transferred to Springfield to better educate herself for her son."  
  
"And what happened to him?"  
  
"Jacob is 12 years old now. Good student. Not problems reported."  
  
"And what about Maggie?"  
  
"Maggie has it in her head that she is Fred Krueger's daughter when in actuality Fred Krueger had no children. He wasn't even married. It's all a story she has made up. "  
  
"And my job?"  
  
"Well since you will be coming to work here, I want you to be as familiar with these cases as I am. I'm going to be away for a while working, and I want to make sure that the patience are comfortable. We have made a real breakthrough with Maggie and I want to make sure that when I come back you have made such progress."  
  
"Of course."  
  
"Good," Dr Keller glanced at the clock. "Why don't we take a break?"  
  
"Wait," said the man looking at Dr Keller's briefcase. A Springwood newspaper was poking from the corner of the bag. "Where are you going again?"  
  
"Westin Hills hospital actually," Dr Keller moved her briefcase from the desk to her side out of the man's site. "I'm going to work at their clinic. I'm going to make sure cases such as Maggie's don't happen again."  
  
"Why such an urgency?"  
  
"There have been a few incidences at their hospital in the past few weeks. A repeat in history, I guess you could say. Kids again say the boogie man has come for them. Over 10 years after the last incidents. It was a dark time in Springwood. I've been requested to come and research it. See if there is a way I can stop it."  
  
"Yeah, you wouldn't want anything to happen to your kids."  
  
The doctor laughed  
  
"Well I have one daughter, Melissa and she's a very smart 17 years old. I think if anything she can set a good example to the kids there."  
  
Dr Keller turned a picture frame to the man showing her smiling daughter.  
  
"You don't tell her about your work, do you?"  
  
"No, I don't. I'm lucky. It can take a lot out a person to take care of kids like I've seen in here."  
  
The man nodded. "It must be a scary thought, to think that your child could wake up and be like those in here."  
  
Dr Keller looked up as the nurse walked Maggie past her office to her room. Maggie's eyes were glazed over from her medication.  
  
"If we can offer some peace, I intend to offer it to them." She said. "After all, a lot of what those kids need is to know is that it's just a dream." 


	3. Chapter 1 The Dream Begins

Chapter 1  
The Dream Begins  
  
She opened up her eyes and blinked. The stale air would keep anyone awake. She scratched her mouse brown hair and sat up. She placed her hands on her mattress. It felt rough and gritty at the touch. She jerked her hand up and looked down and saw the filthy blood soaked sheets. She stood quickly and looked around her room, but it wasn't her room.  
  
The room was small with a full size bed in the middle. The bed was covered with the rusty red blood which trailed the floor and walls before stopping above the bed. She crinkled her feet on the floor, but she noticed how stuck they were to it. She looked down and saw she was standing in a half dried puddle of the red substance. She stepped off of it quickly and looked back to the bed. Echoes of screams hollowed in her ears.  
  
"Rod!" it screamed. "Help me!"  
  
"TINA!" another screamed.  
  
She turned to the door and pulled it open and ran from the room quickly shutting the door behind her. She stood a moment still holding the door handle in her hand. Her heart was beating quickly as she fought the feeling of panic down to the pit of her stomach. She turned around slowly and looked at her new surroundings. She was in a hallway, but it was no longer in a house. It was a school hallway. Lockers traced the walls down what seemed like a never ending corridor. It was dark and the floor was covered with dust. She looked at the hallway where a stripe of crusty blood training down the middle.  
  
'I should run,' she thought, but she found herself following the trail.  
  
"Nancy." A voice moaned. She jerked around, but no one was there.  
  
'Who is Nancy?' She wondered.  
  
She followed the blood down the hallway where it turned. Carefully she peeked down the new hallway, but it wasn't a school anymore, it was a hospital. A rusted wheelchair sat in a corner next to what must have been a nurse's desk. What must have been a food tray lay carelessly on the floor in front of it. It was then she noticed the bloody footprints and drops of blood that now replaced the trail of blood. A boy's cringes of pain pasted her ears. She jerked around, but the school hall was gone and replaced by hospital doors. She pushed against them but they were locked. She turned back around, her heart beating wildly in her chest again.  
  
'Trapped' she thought.  
  
She followed the footprints and looked into the open doors as she passed. The rooms were all empty. A melted tricycle lay at the foot of a bed. Another echoing scream pierced the silence, but when she looked around again there was nothing there.  
  
Her heart pumped in her ears, her breathing sped up but she was refusing to panic. She continued on walking slowly listening for any sound in the silence when suddenly she heard a breaking noise. She looked in the room she passed and saw the burnt wall and crushed television set. She cringed at the site of the gaping hole left inside the screen. For a second she could almost smell burnt hair. She continued to walk until she noticed one door slowly open from what seemed its own free will. She peeked inside to what looked like was once a padded room.  
  
She stopped and walked into it, looking around at the shredded walls. She could still hear the echoing screams around her. "Stay together!"  
  
Suddenly she fell in the center of the room. It was as though she were in quicksand. Her feet sank in the matting and she could feel someone pulling her down. She screamed and kicked but could not seem to hold on. She wrapped her hands around a scrap of cloth and pulled just to have it tear farther until it snapped loose. She disappeared into the feathers and scraps. 


	4. Chapter 2 The First Day

Chapter 2  
The First Day  
  
She jerked up her alarm clock screaming in her ear to wake up. Her body was trembling in her sheets. Her skin was damp with a cold sweat and her blood was pumping hard in her veins. She took a deep breath and looked around, reassuring herself that she was truly awake. She weakly sobbed, letting the tears puddle in her eyes. She had not been that scared in her life and she didn't even know why she as scared at all. It wasn't like a monster under her bed she was afraid would grab her. It was just an empty nightmare, no boogie man in site. She relaxed and pulled her sheets away. The sudden air exposed on her legs she felt a sting. She looked closer at her ankles and saw the raw skin 'But it was a dream!' she thought.  
  
"Melissa!"  
  
She jerked. "I'm up mom."  
  
"Good girl, you better get ready for school, you don't want to be late your first day!" Melissa smoothed her hand through her hair and carefully put her hand on the mattress to feel the softness of her sheets.  
  
"It was just a dream." She said to herself and put her feet on the floor. She glanced over. 'Must have got caught in the sheets is all.' She thought to herself.  
  
She dressed quickly for school and grabbed her pack. When she entered the kitchen her mother looked over her cloths and sighed. "What is it this time?" she asked.  
  
"You always wear that same outfit; the same pair of blue jeans, tee shirt, and that denim jacket. Why not wear that nice outfit I just bought you."  
  
Melissa grinned remembering the pink sweater and brown skirt her mother had bought. She liked it well enough, but skirts just weren't what she liked.  
  
"I'll wear that tomorrow. Besides I think it will look better on picture day." Her mom nodded. "Just feel better that I'm not wearing all black and punching holes through my face like the Punk rejects in detention."  
  
"Well, you know I don't judge people how they look, I just want to make sure you are presentable. No doubt those photos will show up in those kid's futures and they will laugh. Even I wore strange things when I was a kid."  
  
"I know, the pink polyester pant suit." Melissa laughed as she saw her mom cringe from the memory. Her mom looked at her watch. "Okay, it's 7:30. If you hurry you can make it to school on time. Make sure you keep to the sidewalk and don't talk to strangers."  
  
"Mom this is Springwood, not Hollywood. I think I can walk to school and not get mugged."  
  
Her mom smiled and gave her daughter a brief hug before watching her leave the kitchen and head for the front door.  
  
She then turned back to her papers on the counter and put them in her bag. Taking one last look at the headlines and drinking her coffee she placed the paper on the table and left to the garage to get in her car and head to the hospital.  
  
Meanwhile Melissa walked down the street and watched as her mom drove by. She waved briefly to the passing car and looped her fingers through her back pack straps. She turned down Bennett Street towards the main part of town while she headed forward towards Springwood school. She turned the corner to Elm Street. She hadn't taken 2 steps before she felt an eerie feeling of dread.  
  
She looked down the suburban street at the houses that lined the block and tried to see if there was anything out of the ordinary. She saw the cars parked on the side and for a second she thought they had changed. She had been there before, but her mind couldn't remember how or where.  
  
She took a deep breath and back tracked instead insisting on heading a block farther before turning. She kept up her pace until she reached the school and followed the other students in the building. Once inside again she felt the strange feeling she had before, the dread with a hint of déjà vu.  
  
She shook it off quickly then went to the principal's office to get her class schedule. She was starting school here 3 months into the year, so she had some catching up to do. The secretary was nice enough to give her a map of the school as well so that she could get familiar with the halls. Melissa thanked her and headed back into the hall.  
  
The halls were empty then, so all she needed to do was find her class. As she stepped down the 4th hallway she looked up and gasped. She looked to her right and noticed the door from her dream, the one she had shut to leave the blood soaked bedroom. Only now the floor was not coved with the dust or dried blood. She walked slowly down the hallway. Her mind kept resurrecting the nightmare. She half expected to see the blood at her feet or hear the haunted voice call. She kept walking until she turned the corner, but she didn't see the hospital, only another hall. She looked back to the classrooms and glanced at her map to her classes.  
  
Suddenly a hand gripped her shoulder. She gasped and turned around. A man in a janitor's outfit was standing there. He was in his 50's with pale skin and thinning hair.  
  
"You lost?" He asked. Melissa looked back at her map and to him.  
  
"Yes sir, I'm trying to find my class." The man leaned over and looked at her map, his cleaning cart behind him. He pointed his dirty bony finger at the hall they where on and looked at her with his cold grey eyes.  
  
"Three classes down that way on the left."  
  
She thanked him and quickly walked towards her class not looking back. When she got to the door she heard a loud screech. She turned back only to see the man pushing his cleaning cart farther down the hall.  
  
She swallowed the last of her fear and anxiety down her throat before she entered the room and scanned the class, half expecting to see a face she knew but was relieved that she didn't. She smiled briefly then walked over to the teacher standing in front of the class. He looked at her hall pass and nodded.  
  
"Class, this is our new student Melissa Keller. Let's let her feel welcome." He glanced around the class and pointed to an empty seat next to a quite blond girl next to the window. "You can sit there next to Andrea. You will need to get your books from the school library before your next class, until then you can share Andrea's. Andrea, please allow Ms Keller to copy your notes as well. She will need to catch up before test time next Thursday." The girl named Andrea nodded and Melissa walked back to her and set in the desk next to her.  
  
"Hi, I'm Melissa Keller." She said offering her hand.  
  
"Andrea Norwood." She replied smiling shaking her hand. Andrea removed her notebook and handed it to Melissa. When Melissa opened the book she was very pleased that the teacher had sat her there. Andrea's notes were very well kept and detailed. She would be able to catch up easy using them.  
  
All the students paid attention and took notes as the teacher spoke. Melissa was surprised. At her old school there was at least one person taking a cat nap in a corner. In fact she could see one boy crumpled in his desk in the corner but as he seemed to doze he jerked awake and rubbed his eyes feverously keeping himself awake. She could see his skittish posture as his hands reached into his pocket searching for something. 'Must be a druggie' she thought. She dismissed the boy and returned to her notes. She stared at the pages, each well written reference until she could barely see the lines. Her eyes dozed closed for a moment. When she opened them again she looked back at the notes. Then she noticed the words drifting apart. She looked at the again and sure enough, the words separated and drifted at the back of the lines. They rearranged and moved around each other. Then a few words lined up on the page.  
  
"Don't fall asleep." It read. She took her eraser and rubbed the letters, but they didn't fade. "Wake up." It read. "Don't fall asleep"  
  
She looked around the class, but the students were still paying attention. Then she looked back to the page and the words where still there. "Don't fall asleep." Then a voice echoed. "Don't fall asleep." She looked around but the voice didn't seem to belong to anyone in the room.  
  
"Wake up!"  
  
Melissa's eyes flashed open. She looked at the page, it was normal. She looked around the classroom and everything was still normal. Everyone was still paying attention. She shook it off and continued to make her notes.  
  
Suddenly the bell rang. Andrea helped her fill her pack and walked with her to the hall.  
  
"You can keep the notes tonight and copy them. I'll walk you to the library so you can get the rest of your books."  
  
"Thanks." Melissa said following her.  
  
"You'll find things are a lot different from other schools."  
  
"So far I've found it very organized." Andrea nodded. "I swear after those nightmares last night, I could take nap. I wonder if I can do it in study hall, do teachers get on to you for that here?" Melissa stopped; Andrea was not by her side. She turned and saw Andrea, and she looked petrified. "Jeez, I guess they do. Sorry."  
  
Andrea cleared her throat and briskly walked past her taking her arm and pulling her into an empty classroom nearby. She didn't even bother turning on the light before she started to prattle nervously.  
  
"Well, of course you wouldn't know. If you haven't been from around here, sure you wouldn't. "  
  
"Wouldn't what?" Andrea put her bag down and turned to her.  
  
"You said you had a nightmare last night.'  
  
"Yeah, so what? Big deal."  
  
"Well, here sometimes nightmares are."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
Andrea looked nervously at the clock. She was defiantly a school orientated person, scared of being late for class. She pulled her pack over her shoulder and when to Melissa looking her in the eyes. "I'll tell you after school, meet me out front and I'll show you. Just do me a favor. Don't fall asleep." Although the voice was not the same as in her dream she could still feel the hair on her neck stand on end when she said that.  
  
"Okay." She said nervously.  
  
"Promise."  
  
"Yeah." She insisted.  
  
"Okay," she looked at the clock again. "The library is down the hall. I've for to get to class now, but remember, after school."  
  
"Yeah. I'll remember." 


	5. Chapter 3 Secrets Out

Chapter 3  
Secrets Out  
  
As soon as the final bell rung for the day, Melissa was outside the school waiting. Her nerves were already on end because of the 'daydream' she had in class. She wondered what Andrea would have to say to add to her thoughts. She didn't have to wait too long however because no sooner then she stepped in the shade of a near by tree did Andrea emerge from the doorway. She scanned the yard briefly before spotting Melissa standing there, and made a bee line to her hardly glancing at the other students she past.  
  
"So what is the big secret" She asked.  
  
Andrea looked around to make sure the other students where not looking.  
  
"I'll show you." She said and started to walk down the street. Melissa followed closed behind. Her curiosity taking hold as they walked.  
  
"Here in Springwood, we don't take nightmares lightly. Not after what happened here." Andrea explained  
  
"What?"  
  
"Well as little kids we all know the rhyme. It starts out as a joke, that is until you actually look for the evidence."  
  
"I don't get it." said Melissa still trying to piece things together. However so far not much of what Andrea was saying was making any since.  
  
"Well, years back something happened. A lot of kids just sort of ended up dead. And they all lived around here." She explained motioning to the surrounding neighborhood. "It all steamed from the 'Springwood Slasher' or 'Krueger murders'. Fred Krueger was a psycho who would murder children."  
  
"How do you know all this?" she asked.  
  
"It was in the papers. You can find most of it at the library on film." She explained. "I didn't believe it either at first until I actually found the evidence. The story is, the man was caught and released when the trial went wrong. The cops forgot to sign the search warrant in the right place and their evidence was not allowed in court, meaning he got off Scott free. Well the parents of the murdered kids didn't take this very well. They took the law in there own hands and killed the guy."  
  
Melissa stopped in her tracks. Parts of her memory returning, her nightmares the past few nights were resurfacing.  
  
"If you ask any of them to their faces they would deny it. However we all know it happened."  
  
"How?"  
  
"Well, all of their children are dead. They died for all different reasons, some beyond explanation. However if you look at their parents you can see the truth. They are quite; they don't speak of their kids." She explained. "It is a sad situation but it's all true. And it all started here." Andrea stopped and Melissa looked up, and saw the street sign. "ELM ST"  
  
"Why are we here?" Melissa asked; her fear icing her blood.  
  
"Cause this is where it happened." Melissa followed as Andrea continued down the street.  
  
"All of the kids lived on this street. You'll notice no one at school will dare live here because of this. They are afraid what will happen."  
  
"But if the guy is dead, why are they still scared."  
  
"Even in death he couldn't be silenced." She said. "There has been a time, however that things were quite. But even then, it never lasted. Sure there would be a few months where things were normal and you could sleep, but then the nightmares would come. And always a house.this house."  
  
She stopped and Melissa looked to the house. The house was a tall two leave farm style house with blue roof white slats and red door.  
  
"What is this place?"  
  
"This is house of hell, murder, death and everyone's ultimate destruction."  
  
"Not just the house that Jack built?" Melissa said jokingly hiding her own fear.  
  
"This is the house that fear built; Fred Krueger's house."  
  
"The killers?"  
  
"Yep. It used to look worse then this. Originally the local police lieutenant and his family lived here around the time of the first nightmares. After they moved away the house sort of drained the life from it. The place was condemned. We all thought they would tear it down. But perhaps they are afraid to."  
  
"So what is it still doing here?"  
  
"They repaired it rather then destroy it. New roof, paint, even the yard is being kept up. But as you can see from that weathered sign it's been for sale for a long time. No one from around here will live in it."  
  
"Well of course not with this story you're telling me."  
  
"You don't believe me, then you can find out yourself. Look in the papers. It's all there in black and white if you just look for it."  
  
"When did the last person die?" Melissa asked. Her mind was telling her that if it were far enough behind them then her nightmares were just dreams and everything would be okay.  
  
"Well that was years ago."  
  
"And you're still scared?" she said with relief.  
  
"The renovations on the house were done just a few months ago. We have all been on edge since. Not risking it."  
  
"But surely you sleep."  
  
"Yeah, we have but not peacefully."  
  
"What have you dreamed about?"  
  
"Nothing much really; just being lost. in that house."  
  
"Your own fear is doing this to you. Come on. If you go inside, face your fears, then it won't be so bad." said Melissa walking towards the house  
  
"Are you nuts?" said Andrea pulling her back.  
  
"No, but my mom is a physiatrist."  
  
"Don't you go and try and psycho analyze me. Here!" Andrea lifted her sleeve exposing 4 scars on her arm.  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"I was little when it happened, before the nightmares ended. I was staying at a friend's house, I woke up screaming. She didn't stay long after that."  
  
"Who didn't stay long?"  
  
"Alice Johnson."  
  
"And so this guy is sort of the mad hatter?"  
  
"No, just mad."  
  
"Well, I'm not afraid. I'll go in."  
  
"NO!" She said and grabbed her arm before she could head up the path again. "Do yourself a favor, go home. Do your homework, don't tempt fate."  
  
"But I don't believe in this stuff."  
  
"Alright, then don't believe, but until I get my school notes back, just stay away."  
  
Melissa laughed. "Okay deal." Before she could say anything else, Andrea was walking quickly away. Melissa shrugged and continued to walk home. 


	6. Chapter 4 Dream Journal

Chapter 4  
Dream Journal  
  
When she got home, her mom wasn't there yet. She put her things on her bed and breathed deep. She was fighting away the fear and panic she had been hiding from Andrea. She did know what she was talking about. She had seen the places before, but not in the papers, not just then as she showed them to her. She had seen them in her dreams, in her nightmares when she was asleep.  
  
She didn't know why she was afraid; perhaps it was the knowledge that perhaps it could be true.  
  
She went to her computer and sat and stared at the screen thinking of what Andrea had said, and her own reactions to her nightmare the night before. She typed in her password accessing her PC journal on her hard drive.  
  
October 10th  
  
I started school today. It was defiantly a different experience. First off, there are the nightmares. Mom says I should write them down, empty my head so that my thoughts don't take control as I sleep. I haven't tried it before, but I guess I should now. Perhaps then I can get some sleep and the anxiety of being in the town wouldn't keep me up so much.  
  
So.  
  
Dream One: (as best I can remember it.)  
  
I'm walking around the block near my house; its dark and I can feel a slight breeze pass through the trees. It seems to be guiding me or softly pushing me down the side walk. I walk around the corner, and suddenly I'm not on my block. I'm standing in front of an old building. The cold grey structure seems to glow in the street light. I turn to see the way I came, but when I look behind me I do not see the suburban street, but rather an empty road far from any residence.  
  
"Hello?" I call out, listening to see if perhaps anyone is with me or can hear me.  
  
I walk up to the tall door, and press my hand against it. My hand jerks away on instinct. My fingertips have seared on contact. I carefully put my hand near the surface before I put my hand near the door again, but don't feel any heat. So I press my hand against it. It's cold as the night air. I push it and it squeaks open with some effort.  
  
I step inside and look around. The floor is wet and it smells of burnt wood, and I dare say, burnt flesh. I peek around the empty lobby of the building. It's dark and deserted. There is no furniture but for some old rusted chairs turned over against the wall. The metal is worn way to almost nothing and they look extremely unstable. The seats have been torn our and the shredded remains are all that is left. I glance at the walls, but all I find are smoke stained walls and torn soggy posters, rumpled from the moisture. From the corner of my eye I see a light glimmer from a distant hall. I back away towards the door, but then I hear a little voice. "Is this a game?" it says.  
  
I call out "Is anyone here?" and then a soft giggle. 'There is a kid in here, somewhere.' I think to myself.  
  
"Hello!?" I ask desperately "this place isn't safe." I wait and listen to see if anyone responds, but they don't. Suddenly I hear the sound of little footsteps walking down the hall. Thinking who ever is in here is walking away down a far hall I run down to the end of the corridor and look to where I had seen the light flash previously, but I don't see anything. A door near by creaks open, I walk up to it and push it farther. I look down to see just damp steps. A scream comes from below, and without thinking twice I run down the stairs. When I reach the bottom step I am looking at a massive boiler room. I turn to go back up the stairs, and the door slams shut. The only light is coming from aged yellow bulbs in sparse corners. I feel forward to a pipe, but the surface is wet and cold. I hear a high pitched screech but when I turn I just see a furnace cover screech open. I walk over to it and slam it shut. When the metal makes contact closing I wake up and I'm in my room, my mom had closed the hall closet, waking me up.  
  
"Sorry, honey." she says peeking in as I look through my covers. I get up and walk to the bathroom to wash my face. I feel hot and sweaty and my cotton pajamas are sticking to me. When I put my hands in the warm water it stings. I look at my fingertips, and they have been scorched. I don't have blisters, but the skin is tender. I shrug it off and go back into my room to bed. I shut the door and get into the soft sheets. The hall light goes off soon after. I pull the thick blanket up over my head and wiggle in the sheets trying to get comfortable. My bed feels stiff and no matter how I turn it doesn't help. I press my hands against the sheets to lift myself higher in the bed, but when I do I noticed the bed is hard. I open my eyes, and I'm not in my bed. I am lying on the sheets which are laying on the floor in the boiler room. I stand then and look around, letting my blanket fall to my feet. I step from them on the cold floor. I hear a high screech and when I turn back, my blankets are gone and I am alone in the dark room. I walk around the boiler room, to an old work table. Tools have been laid out, yet covered in dust, and rusted. I pick up some twist of metal. I run my finger along its edge and feel its dull surface.  
  
"One two, Freddy's coming for you."  
  
A man is singing it, and from what I could hear it seems like he is in the same room as I am in, but when I look the room is empty.  
  
"Three four, better lock your door" I walk from the room quickly and out into the dark boiler room, the shadows falling down from the corners.  
  
"Five six, fight with stones and sticks" I pause then, listening, the voice follows me.  
  
"Seven eight, gonna sit silent and wait" I ran for the stairs and climbed them, hoping to find a door.  
  
"Nine ten..." I stop running, and listen. Nothing comes.  
  
Nine, ten what?  
  
Then I hear the high pitched scream of a child. I look around but can't see anyone. "Mommy!" the child screams. Its desperate voice runs past me, but I can't see anyone. The child keeps screaming, "Mommy! Mommy!" and then I wake up.  
  
I was in bed, soaked with sweat. I have chills now, just thinking about it.  
  
Okay, now, Nightmare 2:  
  
I wake up sitting on a bench outside the high school; I remember driving past it when mom and I drove into town. It is dark and as I look, I'm still in my pajamas. I stand and walk away from the school, assuming I must have slept walk out. Don't get me wrong, I don't sleep walk, and I was already freaked, so I just want to get home. I walk quickly away, until I hear what sounds like a car drive by. I look around a see an old police car drive past me. As it passes I suddenly realize I'm inside it. I look to the front seat, but there is no one there. I look out the window and see the cars we pass are all stopped and older models, possible 1960's models. I look out to the houses, but they are dark and there is barley even a wind to move the trees. I reach to the door handle, but the door won't budge. I try to roll down the window, but it too is stuck. It drives out past the town until is stops at what looks like the building I was at the night before, an old power plant. The car stops as it pulls up to it and I am then not sitting in it. I'm standing on the steps outside the building. I start to force myself to wake up. I run away from the building, but when I turn the corner to leave I am back at the other side of the building. I try this about four more times before I relent and walk up the steps and carefully open the door so not to burn myself, but it's still cold.  
  
"Hands down Krueger!" I hear a voice yell, and then I hear a menacing chuckle. I walk down the hall but not far, I am soon thrust against the wall. I look over where I hear struggling and there is a thwack against the wall. Where I hear it a small trail of blood appears. "Stay still!" a voice says. Then there is a gun shot, and I wake up. I'm a little rattled by what I saw so I stay awake a while, pace my room a minute, try to watch TV, until I finally fall asleep again.  
  
When I wake in my dream this time, I'm walking down the street. The same way I usually walk to school, and I cut down Elm Street, in my mind, I know that this is the way to walk. It's day time, and the sun is shining down through the trees. I walk to the house that Andrea took me to today; it's all pretty and bright. I look at the blue door and reach for the handle, this is where I have to go, but then I look into the window its dark and I feel a splash of something wet on my hand. I look up and see blood dripping down the surface. I jump back into the sun light and almost trip over the tricycle sitting there. I look back and the door is blue again. Then as quickly as it would be to turn off a light, the sky goes from day to night and I'm standing alone on the street, the house no longer looking peaceful and inviting, and now looks alone.  
  
"You can't get away." I hear a voice say. I turn quickly and see a little girl standing on the walk way. "Many have tried, but it doesn't work."  
  
"Where are your parents?" I ask her.  
  
"Gone," she replies.  
  
"Do you live here?"  
  
"No one lives here, only dies."  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
"Don't fall asleep." she says. And I hear the door behind me slam. I turn to see, but when I turn back to her she is gone.  
  
"You're not afraid anymore." a little boy's voice says. I turn and see him dressed in white. The style was old, like from the early 70's.  
  
"What?" I ask him.  
  
"You're not afraid. You think that will help you. It won't"  
  
"There is nothing to be afraid of." I tell him.  
  
"There is if you stay here."  
  
I hear the cling of the tricycle bell. I turn expecting to see the little girl sitting on the shinny seat, but all I see is the rusted remains. I turn back to the boy, and he too is gone.  
  
Suddenly it starts raining down on me, I turn and run into the house and pull on the handle but it won't open. I then get a huge feeling of dread. I back up from the door, and into the rain, looking up at the white house with its blue shutters and blue door. Without a seconds notice I am running away from it, down the street. Around me I hear screams, crying, and the water falls down on me like tears. But as I run down the street it seems to stretch in front of me and no matter how hard I try a I can't run fast or far enough, I look back and it seems I haven't got ten steps. The street stretches longer and farther and higher, it folds up and seem like it's going to fold over on top of me when I suddenly wake up twisted in my covers, my blanket over my head smothering me. I throw it on the floor and hold my head in my hands, completely freaked out.  
  
Nightmare 3:  
  
Last night's dream was even freakier, I wake up in a blood soaked room, I hear people's voices calling around me, but I see no one. Who is Nancy, Tina, Rod? I know that if this is really as freaky as Andrea says is, and then this is just the beginning. Anyway, it's late, I've written enough. I'll write more later, but for now I've got to sleep. Perhaps my dreams will help me piece together things."  
  
Her hands shaking as the reality of fear sinks in, Melissa turned off her diary and turned back to bed. 'Maybe I should have written about something pleasant before trying to go to sleep' she thought to thought as she covered herself in bed and closed her eyes. She rolled over uneasily, letting all the thoughts escape her mine and then the dream begins. 


	7. Chapter 5 Black and White

Chapter 5  
Black and White  
  
'It's all there in black and white if you just look for it.'  
  
She opened her eyes, hearing a voice whisper the words, however when she looked there was no one around. She was in a damp basement; it was large with tall shelves. The shelved were covered with old papers and dusty volumes of reference books.  
  
"It's all there in black and white if you just look for it." A voice whispered.  
  
"Yeah, and if you build it they will come," she said jokingly while trying to find the voice. The voice was that of a young girl, it seemed familiar but she couldn't place it. It wasn't Andrea's; the person she knew had said it to her earlier.  
  
"NO!" the voice screamed in frustration. "Look for it!"  
  
Melissa jumped as the voice screamed. "Who is this?" She asked it. "Who are you?"  
  
The books around her began to toss off and hit her. She ran down the hall of shelves, their books hitting her as she ran. "Stop it!" she screamed, but they kept hitting her. She stopped, the books no longer pelting her. Then when she looked back down the hall from where she had run she saw the far shelf topple over, then the next and the next. Each self was falling down and they were coming down to her. She didn't stop to think, but ran, the shelves falling faster behind her.  
  
The shelves in front of her seemed not to end and the shelved behind her kept crashing, if she stopped she would get buried in them. She had to appease who ever was after her. "Okay!" she yelled, "I'll look!" then the floor fell from beneath her. She looked around her screaming, her surroundings where black, no walls of floor, just empty space she was falling into. From above her she could see the hole she fell through, and the shelved covering it, books and broken wood falling in the hole after her, no light, only falling. "No!" she screamed. "Stop!"  
  
The light was gone, only blackness surrounded her.  
  
She woke up.  
  
It was morning but she felt she had not slept an hour. Her sheets were strung over the bed and fell in the floor. Her night cloths were sticking to her, and her nerves were shot. Her head felt as though it were spinning, and her stomach churned inside her. She could still hear the voice echoing from her nightmare. "It all there in black and white, if you just look for it."  
  
She got out of bed quickly and ran to the bathroom, the nausea overwhelming. She flushed the toilet after the last wave of nausea and limply pulled herself to the sink, running water in a cup and washing out her mouth. She looked up and saw her reflection. Her hair was a mess, but her eyes were what concerned her. In the last few nights of even being in this town she had not slept a night through peacefully. Her eyes had dark circles under them, and they were very watery and tired. 'Just wash up. That's all you need is a little water.' She washed off her tired face and brushed her hair. She pealed off her night clothes and tossed them in a hamper. She then climbed in to the shower and rinsed off her body.  
  
A few minutes she emerged from the shower wrapped in her robe and sat down at her computer, and documented her nightmare as best she could remember. As she did she could feel the chills and fear as she drifted in the darkness. She typed quickly and turned off her monitor. Her bedside clock told her she needed to hurry to get to school on time. She dressed in a tee shirt and jeans and grabbed her pack from her bed. She had forgotten to copy the noted from the night before and cursed to herself as she walked down the stairs.  
  
When she reached the bottom step she realized she was alone. The house was empty and from the looks of the place it had not been entered all night. She walked over to the answering machine and the message light blinked. She pressed the button and the tape rewound. "One new message" the machine spoke. "Message one, received 10:32pm Monday October 10th" Melissa listened.  
  
"Melissa, honey,' the voice said. "Its mommy, I just wanted you to know I will be staying here at the hospital tonight. I take it you have already gone to bed; I hope you ate something, if not you get something before you leave for school. I'll be home tomorrow afternoon and you can tell me how school is. But for now you have my number, just call the hospital if you need anything. Bye sweetie"  
  
Melissa pressed the erase button and scampered off to the kitchen and grabbed a banana from the counter and a couple of dollars from the cookie jar and headed out the back door. Her watch told her that she had to hurry today, so she put her pack on the back of her bike and pushed it down the driveway of the garage. She pedaled quickly down the street.  
  
She when she got to the school she parked her bike and locked it to the post outside before heading in to the building. She was almost to her home room class when a wave of nausea hit her again. She stopped and held her stomach. She reached for the door handle but fell to her knees. Her body felt cold and sweaty, almost the same as she felt when she woke up. Suddenly the door handle turned and Melissa looked up. Andrea stood over her. She stepped out of class quickly and shut the door. Carefully she helps Melissa stand.  
  
"are you okay?" she asked.  
  
"no," She said exhausted.  
  
Andrea helped her to a near by bathroom and into a stale for Melissa to relieve herself.  
  
"I'm tired of this." said Melissa still bent over the toilet.  
  
"Nightmare?" Andrea asked.  
  
"No, shit." said Melissa.  
  
"I told you."  
  
"You didn't tell me I would be sick."  
  
"Well," said Andrea, "I don't get sick, was it something in your dream?"  
  
"I don't remember." She said walking out of the stall. Her eyes were bloodshot and tired. She went to the sink and washed her face and turned back to Andrea. "Please, if you know anything tell me."  
  
"There is nothing I can say, I've never seen this before."  
  
"It's a bunch of bull, is what it is." She said exasperated. "I've had nightmares that make no since, daydreams that give me headaches, and if I weren't a virgin I would think I was pregnant with this morning sickness." Andrea looked at her concerned.  
  
"What did you dream?"  
  
She fought back her frustrations and thought. "It's all there in black and white, if you just look for it." she repeated.  
  
"Yeah, I told you that."  
  
"No, that is what the dream said, before it plunged me in to the dark abyss of nothingness!" Andrea stopped and looked at her shocked.  
  
"Someone is trying to tell you something."  
  
"Yeah, I should go home, my real home and get out of this town."  
  
"No really, why did you move to Springwood?" she asked.  
  
"My mom." she said. "Why?"  
  
"What does your mom do?"  
  
"She's a shrink, I told you that."  
  
"What kind?"  
  
"I don't know, she never tells me. She isn't supposed to."  
  
Andrea nodded.  
  
"Well I think you should find out, it may help figure out why the nightmares you are having are saying what they are."  
  
"I can't do that, this is all just a planted delusion brought on by lack of sleep and your paranoia."  
  
"Really? Do you honestly believe that?"  
  
"No, I don't because I've dreamed of this Krueger guy before you ever told me about him."  
  
Andrea paled. "You've seen him?"  
  
"No." she confessed. "I haven't seen him, just heard of him I guess."  
  
"Well that is more then I have." She said. "I told you, we haven't seen him, just been lost." Melissa looked up.  
  
"You mean you haven't been in the boiler?" Andrea paled more and shook her head. "Or bloody rooms, halls, the hospital or even this school?" again she shook her head. "Then why have I?"  
  
"I don't know." She confessed. "But perhaps I can help."  
  
"How?"  
  
"I'll introduce you to the rest of us." Melissa looked puzzled. "To the Nightmare Society." 


	8. Chapter 6 Behind Closed Doors

Chapter 6  
Behind Closed Doors  
  
The wake of the nightmare still stung the air in the room. She was standing, it was then she realized she was not awake at all, but still trapped. 'This is getting ridiculous!' she thought. The girl was about 18 years old, with shoulder length blond hair and green eyes. She was still in her night cloths and to her eyes this was just another dream. Another room in a house she didn't know, in a world she couldn't seem to control. Every night she woke in her dreams trapped in the same place, different room. A new bag of tricks after every door.  
  
The room she was in this time was filthy, the floor covered with aged dust and dirt. The angles of the space seemed wrong, the walled farther in the corners. "Could this room get more gross?" she said to herself.  
  
"Play time's over."  
  
The voice was low and gritty. It was that of a man, a voice she had not heard before. The light in the room went out leaving her in darkness. "What the fuck?" she said out of nowhere.  
  
Suddenly a light appeared from underneath a door. Its glow cast in her eyes. It was very bright and almost calming. She walked to it. Carefully she turned the handle and listened. When she didn't hear anything she turned the handle as far as it would go, but before she could push or pull the door swung back towards her and like an explosion a force beyond her comprehension threw her back against the wall across the room. The bone rattling impact of hitting the hard surface knocked the wind from her. She opened her eyes from her crumpled position and shielded her eyes from the light from the door. A dark figure stepped in to view, its features completely blackened by the bright light behind it. The figure was that of a man. He rose his hand slowly placing a dark hat upon his head and stepped through the door way. The girl swallowed; her green eyes wide with fear. Suddenly the man took a few steps, but each seemed to cover several feet until he was right upon her. Suddenly the light returned to the room, as bright as it had been on the other side of the door and she could see the figure whole features.  
  
As quickly as she could register the colors, length, height, depth of anything a warm, crusty hand had her throat. She saw only his eyes, blood shot and cold. She saw the raw burnt skin, and she could hear his voice. "As I said," The voice echoed. "Play time is over."  
  
And she screamed. It was all she could do as she felt the sudden piercing of blunt sharp object entering her stomach. As the pain began to wane she convulsed as he released her neck and her whole weight fell upon the blades pulling her flesh apart as it stopped just short of her ribcage. She could taste the blood well up from her throat and pour in her mouth. He withdrew his weapons quickly letting her fall again to the floor, but she was not yet dead. She looked down, the dirty floor growing red from her blood, the metallic taste in her mouth, the fear gripping her heart. The figure knelt down to her view and she looked upon his face entirely. Tears filled her eyes from the pain and fear and she tried to crawl away from him but she was already in a corner. "Mommy!" she screamed. She felt so helpless and alone. She wanted to wake up, to be safe in her bed, for this all to be a dream, but as the brightness of the room began to deem in her dying eyes, she knew she was not going to wake up. 


	9. Chapter 7 The Nightmare Society

Chapter 7  
The Nightmare Society  
  
They were all that was left from the time that could remember those who chose to remember and keep guard on any who strayed. They were the last to have actually seen the nightmare man, to have felt the heat of his hell and the pain of his knives. In resent months the entire student population of Springwood had become believers as well. When they woke in their dreams lost inside a house their parent's always warned them to stay away from. It was then that they knew it was time to band together even in their darkest hour to protect one another from the nightmares.  
  
That was at least what Andrea told her. Melissa was just trying to make since of the emotional hell she had been put into the few short days she had been in Springwood.  
  
Now it seemed she was on a scavenger hunt, trying to find some clues to her dreams, the voices, and history behind it all. It all seemed to be leading her somewhere, although she wasn't sure where. At the moment it was leading her down the street to Maple Avenue where Andrea told her to meet her after school. There were some people she wanted her to meet, some people she promised would help her, and perhaps she could help them.  
  
Melissa looked down the quite street, it all seemed so peaceful and bright, it was hard to believe it was once the same town Andrea had told her people where killed in. But then again, who was Andrea? Melissa didn't really know her, how was she sure everything she was telling her was true? It all could be a joke on the new girl in town, to get her to believe the insanity. Still she kept riding, bike braked at the drive way near the stop sign, it had a brown roof and door with and oval frosted glass in the center. 'This is it.' She thought to herself and got off her bike and pushed it the rest of the way up the drive and parked it next to the garage. She then followed the flag stones up to the porch and rang the door bell. Melissa waited and looked through the glass. She saw a shadow emerge from the hall and walk up to the door. The door opened and Andrea smiled. "Come in" she said and turned away, Melissa followed and closed the door behind her.  
  
Melissa looked around the immaculately decorated hallway. She could only guess how well decorated the rest of the house was. Andrea didn't stop to show her the 'grand tour'. Instead she headed straight to the kitchen. "Grab a pop out of the fridge if you want." She said and went to the drawer next to the sink. She grabbed a few items Melissa couldn't see and went through a door in a near by hall. Melissa did go to the fridge where she grabbed a diet soda and also went to the door in the hall.  
  
She opened it and looked down. She listened. "Are you sure about this?" she heard a voice say below. It was not Andrea, but a boy. "Yes, I know what I'm talking about." Melissa cleared her throat. "Andrea" she called. "Melissa!" she answered, "come on down, I have some people I want you to meet." Melissa gripped the cold soda can nervously and stepped down the stairs. When she cleared the ceiling she saw that there were many more then once voice down in the basement. There were five more people in fact.  
  
"What's all this?" She asked.  
  
"The people I wanted you to meet." She replied. Melissa stood frozen on the stairs looking in to the eyes of the other kids who looked at her with caution. Andrea had to step forward and lead her the rest of the way down. "This is her, the one I've been telling you about."  
  
"Well then, let's cut the crap and get to business." said the boy. "She knows the big evil, so let's see what all she knows."  
  
"Matt, it's not that easy." said one girl seated on the couch. The entire basement was furnished like a small club, with a bar and stools and pool table in the corner. Melissa could have laughed. Other then the geometry lessons that could come from a pool game, Andrea didn't look like the pool table type. It must have belonged to her parents.  
  
Andrea looked back to Melissa and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. "These are the people I told you about. We call ourselves the Nightmare Society." Melissa nodded those to look at them they just looked like a bunch of kids out on a Friday night.  
  
From behind her another kid came crashing down the stairs. He had dark hair and blue eyes, his jacket unzipped half way, sweat stained shirt underneath and a very panicked look on his face. He didn't even seem to see Melissa standing there, but pushed past her out of breath and near tears. This brought them all crashing down to earth.  
  
"She's dead!" he said. Melissa blanched. Andrea turned from her once marvelous introduction to another school book end trying to control her life. "What are you talking about?" she asked.  
  
"Lara." He said trusting a paper at her. It was the afternoon addition of the local paper. "The bastard got her." Andrea looked at the paper, and the blond girl on the cover.  
  
She read aloud "Lara Lyn Larson was found in her garage early in the morning by her mother Carla Larson. Police have confirmed the death as an accident. A combination of an oil slick in the garage floor caused the young girl to slip and fall upon a garden rake Tuesday evening. Mrs. Larson says she came down stairs when she heard her daughter call for her mother's help. Mrs. Larson then proceeded to the garage where she found her daughter impaled upon the rake. Paramedics attempted to revive the teenager but she succumbed to a punctured lung. Police suspect no foul play and service will be arranges at the Springwood funeral home later this week. Lara Lyn was a student at Springwood High School. This would have been her senior year. Mrs. Larson says her daughter hoped to move to Los Angeles California after school to attend UCLA." They all sat in silence.  
  
"That was a bunch of bull," said Andrea. They all looked at her gravely. "I mean she wanted to go to Harvard, not UCLA." Melissa could have hit her, but didn't know this Lara girl to even suggest it.  
  
"That's not the point!" cried another girl. She had long red hair and was already crying. "Lara was supposed to be here!" The boy who had run in leaned over and began to comfort her.  
  
"We can't let this get to us." said Andrea. "We can't let him get to us."  
  
"What do you suggest we do oh wise one?" Melissa asked sarcastically.  
  
"I say we open you up, and see what makes you tick." She replied.  
  
"I say you quit yanking my chain and tell me some truth or I'm out of here." Melissa said back bitterly. Her head hurt from lack of sleep and she wasn't in the mood to take anymore tricks.  
  
"Fine, then I'll tell you. Have seat, this could take a while." Melissa sat in big cushy chair in the corner and waited at the others joined her. Some had to regain their composure, and fight back tears. When they were all seated facing her Andrea began her story.  
  
"We are what are left from."  
  
"Skip the theatrics and give me details." Melissa cut in.  
  
"Fine." Andrea said shortly. "His name was Jacob Johnson. His mother was Alice Johnson. She was the last one to face Freddy Krueger."  
  
"And you know all of this how? A fortune cookie?" Melissa asked.  
  
"No, from me." said a dark skinned boy. "And I heard it from my sister Yvonne."  
  
"Oh and this is something she tells her little brother before bed, isn't it." Melissa said bitterly. There was something about this whole mess she didn't like.  
  
"No, she told me after I started having nightmares." He replied. "When I was little, I told her I had a boogie man in my dreams. When I told her what he looked like she told me about Freddy Krueger, and how he had almost killed her until she released the soul of his dead mother to stop him, but he didn't stay away. She told Alice about my nightmares and that is when she found out that her son Jacob was having them too."  
  
"But before you get there you have to tell her about the others, Troy." said another girl.  
  
"Fine, you tell it, Lana." Troy replied.  
  
"It all started with a girl named Nancy." When Melissa heard the name she flinched.  
  
"I don't want to hear anymore." She said and stood up. As she past them a hand grabbed her from the couch. "You have to listen."  
  
"I don't have to listen to any of this." The hand pulled harder and when she looked back to who held her she screamed. She was looking in the pale face of what could only be a ghost. The persons face had a shiny film on it, its eyes were clouded and its dark hair lay stringy down to her shoulders. Melissa jerked her arm away and ran for the stairs. Andrea cut her off at the steps.  
  
"What did you see?" Andrea demanded. "What do you know?" Melissa turned back to the others still seated on the couch; the dead girl was not there.  
  
"I've heard them." She replied. "Nancy, Rod, Tina.." But before she said anymore she knew from the looks on their faces that she was right. They had not even told her the names, yet she already knew them. She had confirmed everything they needed to know and they had confirmed her fears. "I'm being haunted."  
  
"Alice Johnson left with her son after the nightmares started again. The dream power she had gotten from Kristen Parker had past to her son, and at his age he could not control his dreams. She left town and when she did the nightmare stopped."  
  
"But they have started again." Melissa said fighting back tears.  
  
"Yes, and we don't know why, But I think you do."  
  
"No, I don't." Melissa pleaded. "I'm not from here. I've never been here. I don't know why I'm having nightmares."  
  
"It's like you said." Lana said. "You're being haunted." 


	10. Chapter 8 Restless

Chapter 8  
Restless  
  
When Melissa got home it was after dark. Her mom still wasn't home. She walked up the driveway and pushed her bike in the garage. She then entered the house and put her books on the counter. Her body was going through the motions but her mind was still swimming from the meeting she had just left.  
  
She sat at the kitchen table and began to mindlessly copy notes from Andrea's notebook. She sped through her History homework and the lesson from her Algebra teacher and put her books away. She then walked up the steps to her bedroom. But as she reached the door way she stopped and turned back to her mother's bedroom. She walked to her door and opened it. It smelled of jasmine and talcum powder. Her mother must have been there that day. She had already unpacked and her corner office was already setup.  
  
Melissa walked to the lamp and turned it on. She reached for a random drawer and pulled it. The drawer was locked. Melissa turned off the lamp and headed back down the hall. A wave of nausea hit her and she fell to her knees. She sprinted to the bathroom and relieved the erg and pulled herself up to the sink. She was hot and cold at the same time. Her skin was clammy and her bone tired and weak. She stepped back out of the bathroom and felt sick again, but she didn't fall she just screamed. "What the hell do you want?" and another cramp hit. She collapses on in the hall. She opened her eyes, her vision blurry, then black.  
  
When Melissa opened her eyes again she was not in her hall way. She had fallen asleep. She was in the damp boiler room. She stood up and walked to the boiler. Fresh blood dropped from the cracks and to the floor. Before she reacts the door opened and burning flames licked the sides of the opening. She could hear the cries of pain and pleads for help.  
  
"You have to listen." The voice said again. Melissa turned from the fire and saw the dead girl again. This time she was not alone. A small group of them were behind her.  
  
"Who are you?" Melissa asked.  
  
"We were the first." A little girl said. It was the same one from her previous dream only this time she looked like the other girl with the white skin and wet hair.  
  
"Why me?" she asked.  
  
"It's all there in black and white, if you just look for it." The girl said.  
  
"I can't. I don't know how." She pleaded.  
  
"We can only protect you for so long." The first girl said. "Then he will find you too."  
  
"What do I do?"  
  
"They have played this game far too long, Now the nightmare man has gotten strong From souls from his past He shall hunt until he finds the last." The little girl recited.  
  
"Then what?" Melissa asked.  
  
"Never Sleep Again." The first girl replied.  
  
Melissa woke up then to her mother shaking her. "Melissa!" she called to her. Melissa opened her eyes and stared at her mother. Her mother felt her face. "You're burning up!" she said in a panic. She helped Melissa Stand.  
  
"I'm fine mom." Melissa insisted.  
  
"No, I don't want to hear that." She sat Melissa on her bed and came back with a thermometer. She put the nozzle in her hear and pressed the trigger. "103.4! Get up; we are going to the hospital."  
  
"No mom, I'm fine." Still her mother pulled until Melissa was in the car and they were driving to the hospital.  
  
Inside the emergency room her temperature had gotten even higher. The doctor checked everything, but she seemed okay.  
  
"Have you been getting ill lately?" the doctor asked.  
  
"I got sick yesterday morning, and this afternoon."  
  
"How much have you slept young lady?"  
  
"I've slept, but not well."  
  
"Have you been taking any medications?"  
  
"No," she lied. "Just haven't been sleeping well."  
  
"You know that if you don't sleep your immune system can weaken. It makes you venerable to illness."  
  
"No, I feel." But Melissa couldn't talk anymore. Her eyes rolled back and she passed out.  
  
"Oh my God! Doctor! Her temperature is 106.5!" Said her mother, and as she said it her temperature again began to climb.  
  
"Nurse we need some ice!" The doctor called. "We need to get her temperature down! Quickly!"  
  
But Melissa couldn't hear them. Melissa was far away from the cries of the nurses and doctors. She was dreaming. But would she wake up this time? 


	11. Chapter 9 Coming Home

Chapter 9  
Coming Home  
  
Springfield Ohio: 3am: the phone rang.  
  
In a daze she reached for the phone. She griped the handle and picked it up placing the cold surface to her ear. She flinched slightly and cleared her throat.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Alice." A familiar voice said.  
  
"Yeah," she replied still a little tired.  
  
"Alice, we need your help." Alice's eyes opened wide.  
  
"Kristen?" she asked in disbelief.  
  
"Alice, it's not over." She slammed the receiver down and moved away from the phone.  
  
"No!" she said out loud. "It is over."  
  
The phone rang again and Alice flinched. She sat there for a moment, considering letting the machine pick it up. On the third ring however she changed her mind and picked it up. "What!" she demanded. "Alice Johnson?" a different voice asked.  
  
"Yes, who is this?" She replied uneasily.  
  
"Ms. Johnson, I'm sorry to disturb you at this hour but it's important."  
  
"Who is this!" she demanded again, her panic growing.  
  
"Nurse Foster, I'm calling from the Springwood Regional Hospital." She replied. Alice swallowed thickly.  
  
"What do you want?"  
  
"It's your Father Ms Johnson." Alice's heart fell. "He's here at the hospital and has insisted I call you to come pick him up. I insisted he call someone closer, but he wants.." There was a fumble for the phone.  
  
"Alice baby," her father asked.  
  
"Dad, what is the matter?" Alice asked feeling better to hear his voice.  
  
"Hey Honey, how's Jacob?" he asked making his voice more calm and smooth.  
  
"He's fine daddy, He's asleep."  
  
"Baby, I just really need to see you. I feel.I feel like I've seen a ghost."  
  
"I'll be there as soon as I can. Let me call a sitter for Jake and I'll be on my way."  
  
It took her about an hour to get ready, reassure Jake that she would be back soon and explain to her neighbor she had a family emergency. Mrs. Bishop was very understanding and told her that she would be fine with her son, and asked she call as soon as she got in town. It then took her 2 hours going at speeds that should never be attempted, to get to Springwood. When she got to the hospital her father sat in the waiting room in a cast. She walked briskly up to him and kissed his cheeks.  
  
"Daddy, what's wrong?" she asked. Her father, his hair peppered with grey hair looked even older from his fear.  
  
"I fell this evening going downstairs. I was here getting my arm bandaged up when.I swear I heard your brother." Alice shook her head.  
  
"No daddy, you didn't hear him."  
  
"I know that I didn't, but.I got this feeling of dread and, I had to call you." Alice hugged the tired old man and sighed. Her father was concerned for her. She had avoided him and the town for so long, he was lonely for her.  
  
"Its okay daddy," she said softly, "I'll take you home. And what do you say I stay a day or two, and maybe take you home with me for a while, and you can spend time with Jake." Her father smiled kindly and nodded. She turned with him to leave.  
  
"I left my keys in the room." He noticed.  
  
"I'll go get them and we can come back for the car in the morning. You just go wait in my car." He nodded and walked out the automatic doors. Alice turned back to the nurse's desk and saw the nurse behind the counter was the one who had called her. "I'm sorry about that; I've just been away for a while."  
  
"No need to explain, my dad does it to me sometimes, it's just a cry for attention, same as with your kids." Alice nodded in agreement.  
  
"He said he left his keys in the room in the back, can I go get them?" she asked  
  
"Sure, just go through that door; He was in the on down to the right." There was a slight buzz and the door unlocked. Alice thanked her and headed through the door.  
  
The emergency room had the same sterile smell all hospitals have. The oxygen enriched air was cold and the floors spotless. She glanced around as doctor's charted patience and nurses patched up random injuries in other rooms. Softly she stepped past them so not to disturb. She walked down the hall and into the room the nurse had specified. Sure enough her father's key lay on the floor, just slightly pushed under the bed. Alice knelt down and picked them up and put them in her purse. She stood and dusts herself off. It was then she heard her name called from another room. She froze for a moment and turned around. 'I should just leave' she thought.  
  
But she couldn't. She walked out of the room and down the hall where she had heard the voice. She paused a moment and listened and again heard her name. She turned to the room it came from and saw a teenage girl wrapped in towels and blankets. She stepped closer to her as she lay there almost as if she were dead. Her skin was white and pasty. She noticed her eyes. "We've got matching luggage." A voice said. She flinched. "Kristen?" Alice whispered. But the girl in the blankets was not Kristen. Her hair was brown, damp and long. Suddenly her eyes opened revealing white filmy eyes. "Alice." A voice said coming from the girl's throat, but it wasn't the girl's voice. It was her brothers. Alice put her hand to her mouth to fight off a scream. Tears came to her eyes and she turned to run only to run in to a woman at the door. Alice stumbled a moment and took a deep breath to control her nerves.  
  
"It's okay." The woman said. "She does look awful." Alice looked back and the girl was laying there with her eyes closed again. "Do you know Melissa?" the woman asked.  
  
"Ah.no." Alice stuttered.  
  
"She's my daughter."  
  
"I.I'm sorry." said Alice sadly. "What's wrong with her?"  
  
"Oh, I'm not sure, although I would think I should."  
  
Alice placed her hand on the woman's shoulder as she looked at her daughter. "It's okay; we can't know everything that is wrong with our kids."  
  
"But you see, I should. I'm a Doctor and I don't know."  
  
"What is your profession?" she asked.  
  
"Psychology."  
  
"Well there is your problem." Alice replied lightly. "I don't think this is something you could have prevented."  
  
"I could have if I had been home." The woman said sadly. "But no, I was at work, going over cases, not knowing my own daughter needed me. All those other kids not sleeping, and mine not being able to sleep either." Alice's blood went cold.  
  
"Sleep?" she asked her voice fearful.  
  
"Yes, I'm Dr. Keller." The woman said offering her hand. "I came here to help with them at the sleep clinic."  
  
"How many cases?" Alice asked.  
  
"Only 2 right now, but then again I probably shouldn't tell you that."  
  
"Oh, it's okay. I won't tell on you." Alice said jokingly hiding her fear. "But what happened to Melissa?"  
  
"Well from what the doctors have figured she hasn't been sleeping." She replied. "And when I came home this evening I found her in the hall. She was burning up. They had to put her in ice to get the fever down. But we don't know why she's sick." Alice looked back at the girl, the dark eyes, pale skin. Her eyes moved violently beneath her eye lids. 'She's dreaming!' she thought. "We've only been in this town for a week and she is in the hospital. I don't understand it." The woman's voice broke then. She turned away hiding her tears.  
  
"It will be okay, Dr Keller." Alice said trying to comfort her. "It will." Dr. Keller sighed. "Yes, well... Thank you." Alice turned silently from the room and walked quickly down the hall and out the door. Once out side she breathed a deep breath. 'It's happening again!' she thought panicked. 'Oh God please, not again.' 


	12. Chapter 10 Putting it Together

Chapter 10  
Putting it Together  
  
Alice sat at the kitchen table. She had already given her father his pain medication so he was sleeping soundly in the room upstairs. She had gone through the house and collected the Sunday newspapers from the living room and was now looking through the stories from the Six months. She skimmed the headlines and cringed. Only 4 seemed to catch her eye. Normally others would have over looked them, accept for the last one which seemed bolder then the other 3. "No, no, no." she repeated.  
  
"Elm Street Home Repaired" House at 1428 Elm Street was purchased recently by an unknown developer. The property, which had sat untouched for over 15 years had been abandoned by it previous owners following the death of their son. The house fell in to disrepair and became condemned shortly after. An estimated $15000 of repairs has been done restoring the house to its original elegance. What makes this an interesting case is the history behind the house. Originally built in the 1960's and later owned by the Thompson family, it first entered the papers during the "Springwood Slasher" case back in the 1970's. When accused killer Fredrick Krueger was released on a technicality, and later died in a fire the police were sent to the house by anonymous tips that Mr. Thompson, then a Lieutenant at the Springwood Police had his hand in the cover up of what some claim to be the Murder of the released man. Neither Mr. Thompson nor anyone else accused ever went to trial. Years later, the house again appeared in the headlines when Mr. Thompson's wife died in her sleep in the upstairs bedroom. After the death of her mother, Nancy Thompson researched dreams and pattern nightmares, becoming involved with the investigation of the "outbreak" at the springwood Hospital Psychiatric Wing when more teens from the Elm Street Area either died from suicide, mysterious accidents or other sorts of death. Again the house appeared among one of the patience. A Miss Kristen Parker, a resident at that time claimed her dreams involved the house. The house itself has not entered the papers since this final incident. However because of the dark past it already possesses, it has stayed on the market all this time. While some residents of the street stand of eggshells wondering if "bad luck" will soon return. This reporter however thinks that the darkness is over.  
  
Follow-ups: Kristen Parker herself as well as the survivors of the hospital later died of suicide. All facts found have been verified by past articles and undisclosed sources.  
  
"2 Teens Die in Car Crash" Blake Tension and Marshal Brass died Saturday evening when their car ran in to a trash bin outside the renovated house on Elm Street. The blood Alcohol levels of the boys were high and the speed of the vehicle was 20 miles over the speed limit for the street. Coroners report says Mr. Tension, who was driving fell asleep behind the wheel while he and his friend were joyriding around the block. Witness claim the boys had been circling the block for an hour playing loud music. While drag racing down the street at 2am Tension lost control of the car and veered in to the garbage bin outside the house. While the property was not damaged, the impact killed the two boys when it threw them through the windshield and against the bin going at speeds up to 40 mph. The family of the deceased have asked if anyone has any information leading to the arrest of the person or persons who gave the boys the alcohol, please contact the police department.  
  
"1 Teen Drowned in House Pool" Britney Martin was found dead drown in her aunt pool at 1489 Elm Street Saturday morning. Mrs. Martin, Her aunt, says she last saw her niece that evening when she went to sleep. Police assume the girl must have left the house later that night for a swim in the pool. After slipping on the edge of the pool hit her head on the side and was knocked unconscious. There are not suspects or witnesses at this time. However the family of Ms Martin asks that you contact the local police if you have any information.  
  
"1 Teen Found Dead in her Garage"  
  
Lara Lyn Larson was found in her garage early in the morning by her mother Carla Larson. Police have confirmed the death as an accident. A combination of an oil slick in the garage floor caused the young girl to slip and fall upon a garden rake Tuesday evening. Mrs. Larson says she came down stairs when she heard her daughter call for her mother's help. Mrs. Larson then proceeded to the garage where she found her daughter impaled upon the rake. Paramedics attempted to revive the teenager but she succumbed to a punctured lung. Police suspect no foul play and service will be arranges at the Springwood funeral home later this week. Lara Lyn was a student at Springwood High School. This would have been her senior Year. Mrs. Larson says her daughter hoped to move to Los Angeles California after school to attend UCLA.  
  
All the papers found hidden on different pages of the paper were within a month or two of each other and as it seemed no one had put the parts together. Alice knew that it was much more the coincidence that these things happened either near the house of on the same street. It was time that Alice did a little investigating of her own. Her mind was still puzzled with weather or not her friend's spirit had really pulled from beyond the grave to contact her and bring her back. If so, it must have been very powerful, for Krueger had never been able to follow beyond the Elm Street residence that he himself had once lived.  
  
The next morning after a blissfully dreamless sleep Alice awoke. Her father was still resting so rather then wake him she left early to the hospital. She had to find out more about the girl she had seen in the emergency room. Perhaps she possessed the same power Kristen Parker had, and she and her son now had. Maybe she could close this gate between them and put the evil to rest.  
  
She got to the hospital after 10am that morning and was able to find the room Melissa Keller was in. She went to the elevator and to the third floor where she had been put. When she found her room she stood outside the door for a few minutes, almost afraid to enter it. Slowly she opened the door and stepped inside closing it behind her. Melissa was resting now, the color still drained from her face, but her hair was brushed and clean. Alice went over to her bed side and looked down at her. "Kristen?" she whispered. "Rick? Dan? Anybody?" Melissa's body convulsed a moment and her eyes opened again, the white glazed eyes staring at her.  
  
"Alice" a voice came. It was like a chorus of all the people she had known that had been killed. "You have to help us, and help her. We can not protect her much longer. He is getting closer." Alice breathed deep, almost near tears.  
  
"What do I do?" she asked. But at that moment her eyes closed and opened again. When they did they were normal brown eyes on the tired face of a sick girl.  
  
"Who are you?" she asked.  
  
"Hi, my name is Alice." She replied. Melissa flinched.  
  
"No, you're not real, it's another trick." Melissa said, visibly frightened.  
  
"No, its okay, I want to help you." Alice pleaded. Melissa looked in her eyes and began to calm down.  
  
"You are real, aren't you?" she asked. Alice nodded. Melissa's eyes tear and she began to cry. "I don't know what's I happening to me. I move here with my mom and all of a sudden I can't sleep, I hear voices, and I think I'm going crazy."  
  
"No, you are not crazy." Alice said trying to comfort her. "I know you aren't because I've seen him too."  
  
"No, you don't understand." Melissa explained. "I've not seen him, I've never seen him. Andrea thought I had too, but I haven't. I've only heard the voices calling for my help, but I've never gotten that far." Alice nodded. That had been what they had told her. They are protecting her, though she didn't know why.  
  
"You have to tell me what is happening, so I can help you." At that moment the door opened and a nurse entered.  
  
"Miss, you have to let this child rest. She has had a hard night." The nurse went over to Melissa and touched her forehead. Putting a thermometer in her mouth the number soon rose to 102. The nurse injected a needle in to her IV, and checked her fluids. "There, now you can rest."  
  
"Rest? You gave her something to make her sleep?" Alice asked. The nurse nodded and left. Alice rose quickly and put her hands of Melissa's face making here eyes focus on her. "Melissa you have to tell me!"  
  
"Come." Melissa said drowsy. "If you want to see, come with me." Alice's eyes widened. She hadn't dreamt in years, not in Springwood.  
  
"How do you know I can dream with you?" She asked. Melissa tried to speak but soon drifted away. Alice sighed and leaned back the chair and closed her eyes willing herself to sleep. She breathed deep, thinking of Melissa, visualizing her standing next to her. She breathed in and out, thinking of the dark space around her until within moments she realized she too was asleep and really was standing next to Melissa. They were in the boiler room. It was hot and damp. A fire roared in the main boiler. Alice recognized it from the one Kristen had died in. Melissa stood in front of it, dressed in jeans and a tee shirt. The same outfit she wore the night she entered the hospital. Alice slowly touched her shoulder.  
  
"Are you real?" Melissa asked not looking at here, sill staring in the fire.  
  
"Yes." Alice replied. Melissa then looked at her, noting she too was dress as she had last seen her. "What are we doing here?" she asked.  
  
"This is where I've been waking up. It is where they keep taking me." She replied. "Who has been taking you?" Alice asked. Melissa pointed behind her and Alice turned. Behind her stood a group of children, some small, some about Melissa's age. All of them were pale and ghostly with white film over their eyes. Alice flinched. The children looked at her and blinked, their eyes returning to normal but their skin still pale. Alice and Melissa turned to them. "Who are you?" she asked. A girl with long dark hair spoke then.  
  
"We were the first." She replied. "You were the last. We need your help in returning to peace." Alice was confused. "He is gaining power from those he has killed. He killed the first to grow form, the second to grow strength, and the third to get out and among the dreams of others. Now he is searching for them all, but only as far as he can reach."  
  
"Elm Street." Alice said. The girl nodded. "So he can't get past Elm Street, but how come?"  
  
"His power still lies there." She replied. "It lies here." The room disappeared and they stood outside the house on Elm Street.  
  
"What is happening to me?" Melissa asked. "Why can't I wake up?"  
  
"He is trying to keep you here." The girl replied. "As he gets stronger the farther he can reach, and the closer he gets to you. He is trying to keep you here for when the time comes, you will be next."  
  
"No!" Alice yelled pulling Melissa to her. "He can't have her, and as long as we don't go to Elm we are fine."  
  
"But that is where you don't understand." The girl replied. "There are already many there." Alice was about to ask who when she jerked awake by a buzzing sound in the room. The fluid bag had emptied and was calling the nurse. Alice looked at her watch. 3 hours had already past, and Melissa still lay still. She took a piece of paper from some hospital stationary on the dresser and wrote down her number and put it inside Melissa's fevered hand. "If you can hear me, call if you need help."  
  
The nurse came in the room and Alice slipped out. Quickly she left to her car. She had to get to Elm and find out who was still there weak enough for him to reach. She had to find them first before night came, before the dreams, and before he got out. 


	13. Chapter 11 Making it Fit

Chapter 11  
Make it Fit  
  
1428 Elm Street: 3pm: October 14th  
  
Alice shut the door to her car and walked up the sidewalk. She had parked away from the house she had grown to fear. Her heart raced as she got closer to it, but her eyes couldn't believe what she saw. It was the house, the same one she remembered but it looked so welcoming and peaceful in the day light. Even with the old "For Sale" sign in the front yard.  
  
"Tricky tricky." She whispered. "What are you hiding?" She walked up the walk way and peaked through the glass on the front door. The inside was empty and unfurnished. The paint was new, and she could smell the freshly turned earth from the flowerbeds next to her. She stepped back off the porch and around the side of the house. She opened the gate and stepped back to the backyard. It too was well kept and clean.  
  
"What are you doing here?" a voice said behind her. Alice turned quickly to see a young high school girl standing behind her.  
  
"Ah. Hello." She said walking back out from behind the house. "I was just checking out the property. I'm considering buying it." She lied.  
  
"Liar." The girl said, the expression on her face unchanged. "No one buys this house."  
  
"Well, you don't know me very well." Alice countered. "And I think your parents should talk to you about respect. You don't go around calling people liars."  
  
"I call them as I see them." The girl replied. "It's not like I wasn't telling the truth. I mean, you are lying." Alice pursed her lips and took a deep breath. She didn't like this girl, or her accusations.  
  
"Well do you mind telling me why I wouldn't want this house?"  
  
"You mind telling me why you would?" She replied. "You some sort of writer? Into murders?"  
  
"No." Alice said, carefully choosing her words. "Why would I have to be interested in murders to want this house?"  
  
"Cause who else would want a haunted house like this."  
  
"Who said it was haunted?" Alice asked. "I just thought it was nice. You sure don't seem to like people looking at it."  
  
"I'm just trying to save you some grief lady." The girl said.  
  
"And what makes you the expert."  
  
"Never said I was." The girl said.  
  
"Well, can you tell me anything about Melissa Keller?" The girls face whitened.  
  
"What about her?" She asked. "New girl is all I know." Considering the girls fidgets Alice knew she was not telling the truth.  
  
"Liar." Alice said.  
  
"Am not!" the girl countered.  
  
"I call them as I see them." Alice said back. "You do know Melissa."  
  
"So what if I do?"  
  
"Ever wonder why she wasn't at school today?"  
  
"Like I said. New girl." She replied. "Doesn't mean I know her well."  
  
"Well, I think I've seen enough." Alice said walking out past the girl. The girl grabbed her as she past. Alice looked at her.  
  
"You would do best not to stay here lady." She said.  
  
"What's your name?" she asked.  
  
"Andrea, why?"  
  
"Well Andrea, there are a lot of things to fear around here, but I'm not one of them." It was then Alice recognized the name. The same Andrea who Melissa spoke of. "Do you sleep well at night?" Andrea let her go, almost throwing her arm back at her.  
  
"Just get out of here." Alice turned without saying a word. Andrea was hiding something. But Alice knew the feeling. She remembered being her age too and having to keep her nightmares to herself. She felt sorry for her. The hiding and secrets, not being able to tell anyone and the person you do tell ends up in the hospital or dead. But still, from the day she was having it nothing was telling her where to go.  
  
Alice got in her car and looked back as she saw Andrea walk quickly away and down another street. She sighed and rested her head against the headrest of the seat. She closed her eyes and let the warms sun soother her. But she opened here eyes quickly. 'No!' she thought. 'Can't sleep, not here.' She started the car and drove down the street, away from the house.  
  
She remembered back, to when Jacob was 5, and the nightmares returned. She remembered Yvonne calling her about her little brother's nightmares. "I'm telling you girl, he told me everything! What do we do?"  
  
"It has to be Jacob!" Alice told her. "He's been having trouble sleeping. That bastard must be using him again!"  
  
"Well make him stop!" she cried.  
  
"I can't, I've tried." She replied. "I don't know what to do."  
  
"You have to do something." She said. "I've heard some other kids are having bad dreams too. We can't let this happen again. They are just babies."  
  
"Okay Yvonne." And that is when she knew she couldn't stay. She packed up and within a week she was gone, and the nightmares left with her. Without his link to the children, he had no power and they were safe. But now things weren't so simple. He had found a new way out, and she didn't know how.  
  
Alice stopped at the stop sign and sighed. "It's harder then I thought." A voice said. Alice turned her head to the voice and saw a girl sitting in passenger seat of her car. The face turned to her. "Kristen?" she asked.  
  
"I thought I was the last." She said. "I thought he was using me, and you."  
  
"What do you mean?" she asked.  
  
"I don't know Alice." She replied. "I'm still trying to make since of it myself."  
  
"Why are you here Kristen?" she asked.  
  
"Cause your dreaming." She replied. "Because I was pulled back, because.." A car horn blew. Alice opened her eyes and she was still parked outside the house. She hadn't woken up like she thought. She waved to the car behind her and started her own. She was just getting pieces, and the pieces she was getting weren't making since. 


	14. Chapter 12 Behind Closed Doors Again

Chapter 12  
Behind Closed Doors again  
  
The soft wet touch caressed her cheek. She opened her eyes and saw the little black poodle looking at her with happy eyes. She reached up and pets its loving head. "Scooter, go to bed." She pleaded. The tiny dog whined urgently causing her to open her eyes again. It was then she noticed she was not in her room. The dirty walls surrounded her and the only familiar thing was her pet poodle.  
  
"Tabitha" a gritty low voice playfully called. She reached forward and took the scared dog in to her arms and pets it softly.  
  
Suddenly and invisible force pulled the dog from her. The small animal cried in fear. Tabitha called out to the unseen enemy to leave her alone. But she could not see anything. She watched as the small dog was tossed hard against a nearby wall. The dog cried in pain and fell to the floor. Tabitha ran to the injured puppy as it whimpered, still alive, but sore.  
  
"You bastard!" she screamed. "Leave him alone!" Suddenly in her arms the dog's stomach ripped open spurting hot blood in to her face. She screamed as she felt the muscles in the small body tighten and heard the small yelp before it went silent.  
  
Tabitha sat in the corner of the dirty old room. Her hands beginning to caked with dry blood and tears streaking down her blood stained face. In her lap lay the cooling body of her pet poodle. She held its helpless body close to her and sobbed. She lay the dog down and in a fury stood and screamed. "Fuck you, you heartless son of a bitch!" She ran to the door and opened it. Again a hallway. She ran down to the end and turned. Around her she could hear the horrid laughter. She sprinted to another corner and turned, but instead of reaching another hall she found a door. She opened it greedily and entered the next room; she stepped upon newly laid carpet inside the house on Elm. She could see the front door, the light of day shown through it peacefully. She ran to it and pulled the door open stepping outside. She felt the sweet fresh air and the sunshine warmed the front step. She screamed to release her frustrations and relief. "I'm out!" she screamed. She stepped off the front porch but as she did a force shoved her back against the door.  
  
"No, no." said the gritty voice. "I'm not done with you yet." She was shoved through the door and down upon the carpet inside. Suddenly she felt her chest rip open. Her blood poured on her shirt and began to snake up in front of her. It looked as though her veins were pulsating outside her body, only the veins weren't hers. She watched and saw the body materialize. The body of Freddy Krueger, but before she could focus on his face he twisted his claws snapping her spine and killing her instantly. 


	15. Chapter 13 Wake

Chapter 13  
Wake  
  
The boiler hissed and churned. Melissa sat on the damp floor and held her head in her hands. "Why am I here?" she asked absently.  
  
"We are trying to keep you safe." The girl said. "Until you can wake up, we have to keep you here."  
  
"How can I look for what I'm supposed to in here?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"Can't stand it anymore." Melissa stood and pushed all the ghosts away from her and climbed the stairs.  
  
"You can't leave." A little girl called after her. Melissa griped the handle on the door and pulled and pushed, the lock wouldn't give. She screamed from frustration. Then she heard the high pitched screech of blades skimming the metal surface. She looked back and saw the others cower away as they heard the screech come closer. Melissa pounded on the door and screamed, but it still wouldn't give. As quickly as she could she ran down the stairs and stood in front of the frightened group of children and teens. "You want me you son of a bitch! Come and get me!" she screamed. From behind her hands pulled her back. She fought against them, but they kept pulling her back behind the crowd. "shhh." Someone whispered. Melissa looked at who had her. "Stay quiet." In front of her crouched below view was another girl. Only she looked much older to her, as though she were in her 20s. "We have to wake you up. It's not safe here anymore."  
  
"Who are you?" Melissa whispered. The girl glanced at her.  
  
"Nancy Thompson." She replied. "Now wake up!" and Nancy slapped her across the face.  
  
Her eyes opened. She was still burning with fever and her head felt heavy. Her medication was running out, and she had to move quickly before the nurse returned to dope her up again. She moved her fingers and felt a piece of paper in it. The name "Alice" written on the top confirmed she had not been dreaming. She had to get out of there. She held her breath and pulled the needle from her hand and the patched from the monitors from her chest. She swung her feet over the side of the bed and put them on the floor. The floor was cold and her legs and feet ached from lack of use. Her head swooned as she walked to the closet and saw the cloths her mother had left her and pulled them from the hanger. In the bathroom she patched her cuts and holes with bandages and cotton. She struggled buttoning the jeans and fastening her bra. She quickly ran a brush through her hair and washed her face. She grabbed her jacket and stuck her patched hands in her pockets and snuck out the hall where no one could see her. She safely got to the elevator when she heard the nurse at the nurses station notices her monitor had gone flat. She only had a few minutes to get out before they searched for her.  
  
When she got out the doors and the cold night air hit her cheeks she welcomed them, making her more alert. She felt her cheeks, and could feel the fever in her. But it wasn't fever, it was the heat fro the boiler.  
  
She walked away from the hospital and to the bust stop. She had a few dollars in her pocket. It should be enough to get her closer to home. She was confused. She couldn't' figure if it was because of the fever or the nightmares. But she wasn't going back in, if she could help it, she wasn't getting there again.  
  
It was late that evening when she finally got to her street. She turned away from the passing cars, hoping no one saw her. Then when she got home, she saw again her mother was not home. 'Just as well' she thought. It would make her search easier. She opened the door and went inside the house. She went back up the stair and to her mother's room she walked over to her desk and pulled on the drawer. It wouldn't give. She left the room a moment and went to the garage. When she came back she jammed the edge of a crow bar in the side of the desk and pushed it open. The lock busted and the drawer released. She opened the files and looked, though she wasn't sure who she was looking for. It was then she noticed all the names. They were familiar. "It's all there in black and white if you just look for it."  
  
"Maggie Burroughs, Kristen Parker, Roland Kincaid, Taryn White, Nancy Thompson.they are all here!" she rummaged through more and more names and they were all there. "She knew! The bitch knew!"  
  
"Melissa!" she turned and saw her mother in the door way. She rushed over and took the files from Melissa.  
  
"You knew! You knew all of this and you brought me here!"  
  
"It isn't true, honey." She said taking the files away from here. "These were sick people. I'm just here to prove it."  
  
"Prove it?" she said in disbelief. "Mom, you're killing me! Why do you insist it isn't true?"  
  
"Because I know it isn't."  
  
"Mom, Fred Krueger."  
  
"IS DEAD!" She screamed. "He's dead! I saw the bastard burn! He is dead!"  
  
"You watched it?"  
  
In a daze Melissa saw the girl standing in the hallway behind her. Melissa stood and stumbled to the door. Her mother thought she was leaving to be sick, but she wasn't. Melissa watched the girl point to the closet. Melissa jerked it open and threw towels and sheets in the floor. Hearing the commotion her mother ran to the hall and saw her. "Melissa stop!" she screamed. But Melissa didn't. She pulled more from the sleeved until a case became visible from the top shelf. She pulled it down. Her mother came towards her, grabbing her arms. "NO!"  
  
"I have to know!" she cried trying to pull the case back. But in the struggle they both lost grip on the case and it went flying over the rail and down the stairs, smashing open on ever step. The papers inside the box rained down on the floor below. Melissa ran after them and her mother followed trying to stop her. She grabbed hold of her jacket a moment causing her to loss her footing and stumble down the last few steps on top of the papers. Melissa opened her eyes and was looking in to the face of the girl in her dreams, only this time it was a photograph.  
  
"This is the girl from my dream." She said picking up the picture. Her mother came down the stairs and tore the picture from her hands.  
  
"No." she insisted. "You've never seen her."  
  
"Yes I have." Melissa countered. "She said she is protecting me from him." She looked around at the other papers around her. They were very old and worn. "Springwood Slasher claims another", "Killer Caught"... They were headlines from old papers.  
  
"Mom, what is this?"  
  
"Proof that he is dead." She said in tears. "The bastard killed my baby!" she cried.  
  
"I don't get it? Who?" she asked.  
  
"I had a child young. He was an adorable little boy, and that bastard took him from me when he was only 4! How do you think any mother would feel being 19 years old and your son is murdered? But who cares about some poor pathetic teen mother and her bastard child? They did. When it happened to them they cared and we were not going to let it happen again."  
  
"But momma."  
  
"Your father didn't know about it. I never told him and I was never going to tell you." She confessed, tears streaming down her cheeks. "But then the nightmares happened. It was my 5th year at the clinic when I was given Maggie Burroughs's case, and it took one transfer from Westin Hills to undo all my work. They kept telling me about him and it was like it was happening all over. At first I thought it was me, letting my mind go wild, until that Thompson bitch gave him that name."  
  
"You can't hide mom." Melissa pleaded. "All this is really happening."  
  
"No it's not!" she screamed. "It's all just dreams, paranoid delusions! I'll prove them wrong!"  
  
"Mom! You're proving them right!" Melissa cried. "I'll prove to you its true!" Melissa grabbed her mother's wrist and dragged her to the living room and pushed her on the couch. She then took the phone looked at the paper she had tucked in her pocket. She dialed the number. 


	16. Chapter 14 Proof Dream Deep

Chapter 14  
Proof Dream Deep  
  
Alice was at home with her father. They sat next to each other playing cards and laughing at the general situation. They had the radio on in the back ground, only for noise while they played. Alice was barely paying attention even to the radio announcements and weather reports. It was then she heard her cell phone ring. "Give me a sec, I told the sitter to call me if Jacob needed anything." She said put her cards down and going to her purse in the other room.  
  
"Tell Jake I said hi!" he called after her. Alice smiled happily and picked up the phone.  
  
"Hello?" she asked.  
  
"Alice?" a voice answered.  
  
"Yes, who is this?" she asked.  
  
"It's Melissa Keller, you met me today."  
  
It was then Alice registered who se was speaking to, and also heard the radio in the next room. "Search continues for the patient who disappeared from the Springwood hospital. 18 year old Melissa Keller, who was admitted late last night for sever fever and unexplained illness was missing from her room around 7pm this evening. Police ask if you see ms Keller you contact the emergency room as soon as possible for she is a very sick young girl..in other news the forecast for Halloween this year promises to be clear with minimal overcast. Parents are suggest however to keep their kids bundled up warm case the temperature is scheduled to get down in to the low 50's. That is all for now thank you for listening to KRGR, you local Springwood Radio." Then the music started again.  
  
"Melissa!" Alice whispered. "Where are you?"  
  
"I'm at my house.and I have some news." She said. "I need you to get here, it's 2419 Farley Lane." And then she hung up. Alice's breath stuck in her throat. Her blood seemed to still and she felt a fear she hadn't felt in years. She hung up the phone and put a smile on her face.  
  
"Hi dad, I've got to step out for a minute." She said.  
  
"Old friend from school call?" he asked.  
  
"Yeah." She lied. "I'll just be a little while. Don't peak at my cards and we will pick up when I get back." He nodded.  
  
"I'll just go catch the end of the game on TV." He suggested. Alice smiled and kissed her dad briefly on the cheek before taking her keys from the counter, her purse in hand and left out the door.  
  
She drove quickly down the street until she got to the street Melissa had mentioned. She pulled up in the drive way and looked at the house. It seemed dark, but for a lamp light in the living room. She got out and walked up to the door, her hands trembling. She heard the door unlock and open. Melissa stood there, behind her Alice could see the rain of papers and the broken case. Melissa took her hand and led her inside. "Pardon the mess." She said absently. Alice took Melissa's hands in hers. Her wounds had opened again and the bandages were saturated with blood.  
  
"Your hands!"  
  
"It's okay, I'm fine." She insisted. "I just need your help."  
  
"What's happened?" Alice followed Melissa in to the living room where her mother sat clutching the photo. "Alice, this is my mother." She said. "Mother, this is Alice Johnson." Dr Keller looked up and recognized Alice.  
  
"You, You did this!" She cried. "You told her, didn't you? See Melissa! It's just like I said. It's not real, just pre-suggestion! I saw you in her hospital room. You could have told her anything in that fevered state."  
  
"NO MOM!" Melissa cried. "This happened before the fever." She said calmly.  
  
"What's going on?" Alice asked.  
  
"I found out my mom is hiding more then she's letting on." She pointed to the scatted papers on the floor. Alice walked over to them and looked. "It seems my mother is one of the parents who killed Fred Krueger 30 years ago."  
  
Alice picked up the clipping and recognized the people in the pictures from Melissa's dream. "You were one of the parents who killed him?" Alice asked.  
  
"The son of a bitch deserved it!" she cried.  
  
"They killed him in his sleep." Melissa explained. "I need you to help me prove to her this is true."  
  
Alice nodded. Melissa walked over to her mother. She looked like a broken woman, like the energy had been drained from her body when Melissa found all her secrets. She stretched out her hand and held a packet of sleeping pills she had taken from a medication cart at the hospital. "Take them."  
  
"No!" she said. "This is ridiculous. None of it is real, honey you have to believe me!"  
  
"Believe me first!" she countered thrusting the pills in her hand. Melissa left the room and came back with a glass of water. "Take them and believe me." She said and handed her the glass. Dr Keller put the pills in her mouth and swallowed them.  
  
"Now what?" she asked.  
  
"Now we wait."  
  
Alice took Melissa in the dining room where she assisted her in patching her cuts. They glanced in at Dr Keller who sat on the couch in the living room. Melissa flinched as Alice removed the bloody bandages. "You know you're not supposed to lift things or do any heavy activity after taking one of those out, right?" Alice explained cleaning her hands. Melissa nodded. "Then why did you?"  
  
"The walls are breaking in there. I had to escape." She explained.  
  
"What?" Alice asked urgently. "He's in there and you're sending you mom in! Are you crazy?"  
  
"I might as well be!" Melissa countered. "I have to prove it to her."  
  
"I'm not going in there!" Alice said sternly and pushed a clean bandage on the tiny hole on her hand.  
  
"Well." Melissa said, her breathing becoming faster. "I guess I'm going in with or without you." Melissa's eyes rolled back in her head and she collapsed against the table and fell to the floor. Alice ran from her seat and rolled the unconscious girl on her back. Dr. Keller ran from the couch and to her daughter. She felt her cheeks and opened her eyes, glancing at watch.  
  
"She never should have left the hospital. This fever has corrupted her judgment." She explained taking her pulse. "Her heart beat is erratic; we need to call an ambulance."  
  
"Shut up!" Alice exclaimed. "She is not crazy, and we can't get her to the hospital in time. I'm going in after her." Alice walked in the living room and lay on the couch. "If you see either of us struggle wake me up." She said.  
  
"No way! I'm not letting my daughter sit here and die while you take a nap."  
  
"Just do it!" she screamed. Alice closed her eyes and tried to ignore the sound of Dr Keller's pacing in the dining room. But as hard as she tried she was not sleeping. 'He keeping me out!' she thought. In frustration she ran to Melissa's body and hunted her pockets. Sure enough a small packet of pills still lay in the bottom. She tore open the packet and swallowed the pills. However the pills were not fast acting, and Melissa's time was running out. Alice watched as sweat poured from the girls face, and her breathing sputtered. "Leave her alone!" she screamed. Melissa's body convulsed and her eyes opened. "Alice!" a voice cried from her throat. Dr Keller backed away.  
  
"Oh my God!" she cried. "She's possessed!"  
  
"She isn't possessed." Alice said annoyed. Alice searched her memory to place the voice coming from Melissa's mouth. "Joey?" she asked. Suddenly Melissa reached up and grabbed Alice by her collar. Alice looked in to her blood shot eyes and knew something else had taken hold of her. "Come and get her, bitch." Came growling from her. Alice instinctively punched Melissa hard in the face. She fell limp to the floor. From behind her Dr. Keller fell to her knees and then collapsed next to her daughter. Alice reached over to Dr Keller and felt her throat. She too had fallen asleep, only she knew she was entering her own dream, away from Melissa and Melissa was helpless alone. Alice screamed in frustration and smacked Melissa across the face. "Wake up!" she cried, but she lay still. Alice willed herself to sleep, but it didn't take much, the pill she took began to take effect. She stood sluggishly and walked in to the living room collapsing in a nearby chair. "Oh God" she muttered. Fear overwhelming her, her heart beat quicker increasing the speed of the medication in her. She fell asleep. 'Think of Dr. Keller' she thought. "I'm coming" she whispered and was gone. She faded in to the black. It would take a few minutes for the dream to truly begin.  
  
The fog around her lifted. She was standing outside the burnt power plant. Beside her stood Dr. Keller. "Oh God!" she whimpered.  
  
"This is where it happened." Dr Keller said hearing her behind her. "I've not thought of this place in years, until now. And I probably would never have if you hadn't brought all this out in my daughter." She accused.  
  
"It wasn't me." Alice replied. "This is real, Dr Keller."  
  
"It's Gina for God's sake." She said. "And if this wasn't you, then how is it Melissa knows all she does?"  
  
"In the end, we all seem to find out more then were care to know." Alice replied.  
  
"So, what do we do?" she asked.  
  
"I guess we go in." Alice said walking passed her up the stairs to the lobby. Gina followed close behind. As they stepped through the doorway the door slammed behind them. They both flinched and turned as the lock clicked. "Shit!" Alice swore. From all around them they could hear a deep chuckle.  
  
"Wanna play?" the voice said. It sent shivers up Alice's spine. Gina looked over at her. It was a familiar voice, deep and scared from the fire the voice of Fred Krueger called again. "Tricky tricky!"  
  
"We can't stay here." Alice said grabbing hold of Gina's hand. "Come on!" they ran down the hall but as they turned the corner the hard floor made way to carpeted halls. "Oh no!" she gasped.  
  
"Your it." The voice said. "One two.. Freddy's coming for you."  
  
"RUN!" Alice called. Gina stopped a moment and removed her heels tossing them to the side and ran after Alice as she darted down the hall. Alice stopped at ever door and pulled on the handle.  
  
"Three four..better lock your door."  
  
From behind the door she could hear other screaming. Blood poured from beneath it and soaked the carpet. Gina ran past her and tried another door, but it too was locked.  
  
"Five six..grab your crucifix."  
  
Alice ran down to another hall and tried the nearest door, blissfully it opened and she and Gina ran in to it. Alice slammed the door as she heard Gina scream. When she looked back they were in a hall of frames and broken glass. A wedge of glass had stuck in Gina's foot and it was now bleeding freely. "Where the hell are we?" Gina asked as she removed her white coat and tore a sleeve off with a wedge of broken glass and bound her foot.  
  
"I don't know, I've never been in here." The hall was old and aged with years of dust. An echoing scream came out. From the voice she could recognize it. "Joey?" she whispered.  
  
"Sever eight..better stay up late" she heard again.  
  
"We have to run." She pleaded with her. "Come on." She said and pulled her behind her as they carefully walked down the hall of broken glass and to another door. Alice pushed it open and looked down at the skeletal remains lying on the floor. Gina held back at the doorway as Alice slowly walked towards them.  
  
"Don't touch them!" Gina called. Alice ignored her and slowly turned to body over. In a moment body became flesh and Alice saw the body of Nancy Thompson lying in front of her. Alice had never meet Nancy but knew her from pictures. She looked older, as though her soul aged though she remained trapped. A grey streak still in her dark brown hair from the last time she faced Freddy. From behind her Gina too saw the body and flinched. "Oh my God!" she cried, "She's real!" suddenly from behind her the door shut on Gina, leaving Alice with Nancy's body and Gina alone in the hall way.  
  
"Gina!" Alice screamed running to the door.  
  
"Alice!" Gina called back. 


	17. Chapter 15 Truth Blood Thin

Chapter 15  
Truth, Blood Thin  
  
Melissa was in the boiler room. She was crouched on the top step overlooking the boiler. Below she watched as Freddy threw a body in to the boiler. It was then she knew that the others who had helped her, the spirits of those who had already died, had been beaten and she was alone. As the last soul hit the flames the Fred Krueger stood back and admired the sight, enjoyed the screams. "Ah" he sighed. And he turned and looked up directly at Melissa. She flinched and backed away. "Can't hide." He said. With each step he took seemed to cover several feet until he was right upon her looking down at her in his soiled shirt, and blood stained claw. He reached down with his flesh hand and pulled her up to his eye level. Melissa gasped and waited for him to kill her.  
  
Only he didn't. She felt him pull her to him and she could feel the heat of his breath on her ear. "shh." He shushed slowly and calmly. "Don't worry. Not going to kill you yet." And as though he were liquid he stepped inside her. Melissa was released and she fell to her knees, which pitched her forward and down the metal stairs until she hit the filthy ground. In pain and aching she rolled over. She could feel the burning inside of her. His rancid soul was invading hers. She tried to stay focused but couldn't.  
  
'What happens if you die in your dreams?' A voice questioned inside her head. 'I don't know. I heard that if you die in your dreams, it's for real.' Another answered.  
  
Her body vacant of being and of will. Her eyes opened. White film covered eyes, and Freddy stretched his arms. Only his arms were not his. They were Melissa's. Gloveless and burn free he breathed deep.  
  
Mean while inside Melissa's house, her eyes also opened. Freddy's strength from the old souls and the new had given him the power to take hold of her even in to the real world. He looked down to Melissa's mother. His mind remember to the trial, with her in the audience, and to his death when he tried to run out only to have the doors locked, and seeing her face through the smoky glass. Her face along side the faces of the parents of the other children he killed. His anger boiled over in his veins and he walked with Melissa's feet to the table, and reached with Melissa's hands to the sharp scissors that lay there. He closed his eyes.  
  
When he opened them again he was standing behind her in her dream. He willed the door to shut and to lock. Gina flinched and banged on the door. He heard Alice from the other side also bang. He smiled. Gently he reached for Gina's shoulder. She turned to him, but to her eyes only saw her daughter. "Melissa?" she said.  
  
"You didn't believe, did you mother." He said with Melissa's voice. "You didn't think it was true."  
  
"Oh God, baby I'm so sorry!" Gina cried and ran forward and hugged him. "I'm so scared."  
  
"It's okay mother." He said smiling, both in the dream and as he stood over her sleeping form. "I know you believe now." And he thrust the scissors down and plunged them in to her chest. In her dream Gina screamed and backed away from him. Her chest began to bleed through her shirt. "What's wrong mother?" he asked. Gina looked up at him with frightened eyes until she hit the door.  
  
"You're not Melissa." She said as the blood rushed up her throat. "You're not." He shrugged and smiled evilly with Melissa's face and disappeared.  
  
He opened Melissa's eyes and looked down as the blood was pouring from her limp chest. He crouched down and listened to her breath. Then he smiled and drove the scissors down upon her chest again. He continued to do it over and over while laughing.  
  
Meanwhile in the dream Gina fell back against the door screaming as cuts appeared in her chest, and blood poured down to the floor.  
  
On the other side of the door Alice still struggled with the door. She stopped suddenly hearing Gina's body fall and blood ooze from under the door. Alice fell to her knees and cried. From behind her Nancy's eyes opened and she sat up. Slowly she walked over to Alice, who sat sobbing. Nancy reached down and touched her shoulder. Alice spun around and backed away.  
  
"It's okay." Nancy said calmly.  
  
"I'm going to lose." Alice said absently. Nancy shook her head.  
  
"If I could live, so can you." She said.  
  
"But your dead." Alice said bitterly. "Only because I let down my guard." She replied. "You can't let down your guard. Things are never how they seem. So. wake up." She shouted and smacked her across the face.  
  
Alice's eyes woke up. Above her stood Melissa, only she was covered with blood and had a wild mad look in her eyes. Alice trust her hands up as the scissors came down on her. With all her strength she pushed Melissa away and twisted the scissors from her hands. She spun and kicked her back and remembering what her brother Rick had once learned she high kicked her across the face. Melissa stumbled back and fell to the floor.  
  
Melissa came crashing back to reality when her head hit the floor. She opened her eyes and looked up as Alice swung her foot back to kick her while she was down. Quickly she rolled away and scrambled to her feet. "Alice!" she called backing away. "Stop!"  
  
Alice pulled her arms back with her fist ready and watched as Melissa stumbled to her feet. Alice reached forward and pulled Melissa to her and looked in to her eyes. She didn't see the bloodshot anger, but only the bloody watery frightened eyes of a beaten girl. Melissa's eyes darted to the next room where she saw the blood splashed walls. She pulled away from Alice's grip and ran to the dining room to the butchered body of her mother. She flinched away and clinched her fists. She wailed in anger and pain. Sobbing she let the tears fall. Alice walked to her and held her close. Melissa tried to push her away, but Alice held her they way a mother would. Putting her head on her shoulder Melissa cried.  
  
"Why?" she cried. "Why couldn't I help her? Why couldn't I join her?" she cried bitterly.  
  
"Because you can't." Alice said softly. "Only Kristen could do that. When she past her power to me, I shared it with my son. Without it, you are on your own."  
  
"How could he take me?" Melissa asked. "I don't know." She replied. "It must be the souls. Some how he has claimed them back. He's stronger with them. How did he take you?"  
  
"He knocked me out." She said. "He just passed in to me, and I fell down the stairs."  
  
"So your body was empty?" Alice devised. "He took you when you couldn't control yourself. That bastard!"  
  
"I'll kill him." Melissa said bitterly. "I'll fucking kill him."  
  
"If only we knew how." Alice said. "We have tried so many times, and we can't seem to do it." Melissa thought a moment, she remembered back to the meeting with the others. She glanced down at her mother's dead body and looked back to Alice.  
  
"He needs to kill us." She said thinking. "The children of all those who killed him; his unfinished business but I'm the last one." Alice thought too, back to Kristen's spirit in her car. 'I thought I was the last. I thought he was using me, and you.'  
  
"I don't think it's going to be that easy." Alice said in thought. "He used me to get to others. He used my unborn son too. His business truly isn't done.he has been waiting. Waiting for you to return, so he can claim you."  
  
"But what then?" Melissa asked. "After he has us all, what is left? Does he then die?"  
  
"No, I think after that, he lives." Alice said as the resolution came over her. "He was able to enter you and use you. A killer with no body, but he can take ours."  
  
"You are our only weapon." Melissa said look at her blood soaked hands. "You can protect us." Alice's eyes widened.  
  
"No," She replied. "I am only me, and not even me or my beliefs ever saved me."  
  
"I refuse to believe that we are the only ones to survive. I may be the last direct link to his past, but surely there are more like you, who aren't as damned. I practically have a sign across my face that says 'kill me' because my mother was a witness to his death."  
  
"And I'm the last witness to his last death." A voice said behind them. They turned quickly to the direction of the voice, and there stood an aging man. His hair graying, but his face unmistakably familiar.  
  
"Doctor Gordon?" Melissa asked astonished. "I thought you were supposed to be watching the hospital?"  
  
"When your mother asked me, it was not an accident." He replied. "I have watched her ever since my research in to the 'Springwood Slasher Murders'. I knew there was much more to her interest in Maggie Burroughs then she let on."  
  
"Doctor Gordon?" Alice said silently to herself. "Kristen told me about you. You were there when she was locked in Westin Hills." He nodded.  
  
"It is not going to be easy, but when your mother told me about what happened to you I knew he was not finished, and was still waiting."  
  
"But how is he able to find the old souls?" Alice asked. "I released them, he was weak, but now he is so strong."  
  
"I don't know." He confessed. Melissa sighed in frustration. Her limbs felt weak, and she felt tired. She could still feel his essence inside her. "He's still here!" She exclaimed. Alice and Dr Gordon looked at her with amazement. "A link is what he needs. He needs me to keep killing!" She cried.  
  
Like pieces of a puzzle things began to fall in to place for Alice. The link to Elm Street, Melissa, and herself became so much clearer. He truly had been waiting for her to return. The other deaths were to get Melissa there so he could kill Melissa's Mother.  
  
"What is Melissa's connection with him." Alice asked.  
  
"Her mother was a witness to his death."  
  
"No, I think she had more of a hand in it then we think." Alice said. "I think she was the one who started it." Dr Gordon nodded.  
  
"You are right. She was." He confessed. "She tried to rally the people with her to kill him, after her son Adam was murdered. But no one would. She was an unwed mother who had her son at 15. She was 19 he was murdered, and she vowed to get his murderer. No one would help her. They shunned her, ignored her."  
  
"Until it happened to them." 


	18. Chapter 16 In the Beginning Part 1

Chapter 16  
In The Beginning  
Part 1  
  
September 12th 1973  
  
Missing children wasn't something new to see on the cover of the paper in Springwood. What was unusual was the fact that no one would do anything about it. Proof was so hard to find when it came to crime scenes. It wasn't like they could find a smoking gun or even a finger print on the bodies. Out of the 15 missing over the last few years only 8 had been found, and found dead. Parent's grieved as parent's do, cursing God and whatever villain had killed their children. But who cared for the parents? It seemed no one did.  
  
Gina Keller was the most resent among them. Her 4 year old boy, Adam had just been discovered stuffed in a blood soaked sack in the back of an abandoned truck just near the City limits. Gina, 19, unwed and single sat crying at the police station. Her son was the first body ever found nearly fresh, and the gruesome things done to his body were too much for even the local police to stomach. Lt. Donald Thompson sat looking at the report on his desk and glancing up at the sobbing girl sitting on chair across from him. How could he tell her the things he had to tell her?  
  
He took a deep breath and opened his mouth to speak, but no words could form. "Mrs. Keller?" he began after some effort. "When did you say your son went missing?"  
  
Gina fought back sobs. She dried here swollen red eyes and tried to think. "It was on Saturday." She explained. "I came home from working at the diner, and picked him up from his babysitter's. We were walking home that evening just past the high school. He was playing with a paper airplane in the street light as we were crossing the street. He ran ahead of me at the corner of Bennet and Branch. He went around the corner and as I walked ahead, when I turned past the bushes, I didn't see him anymore." She started to cry again, but still continued through her sobs. "I stood there calling for him and looking, until I was soon screaming. That's when you came and picked me up."  
  
Lt Thompson nodded and glanced at the report. Everything she was saying matched the report he wrote a few days before. They had looked all over the block to try and find him that night, but couldn't even find a shoe print. Now he was going to have to tell this girl that her son was found, but not alive. But from the looks of it, he knew he didn't have to tell her, she knew.  
  
"Where did you find him?" she asked solemnly.  
  
"He was found inside an old truck outside of town." He said gravely. He glanced at his family photo on his desk. His wife sat with a rosy faced 3 year old little girl on her lap. Just behind them stood his older daughter with her hand on his wife's shoulder.  
  
"You have kids?" she asked suddenly. He nodded staring at the photo. "Then you know how hard this is for me." He nodded again. "When can I see him?" his face paled. He had hoped he wouldn't have to do this, but he did need a positive identification. Gina didn't have any family locally, and none that she had seen in the last year. He signed and stood.  
  
"Come with me" he said. Gina stood weak kneed and ready to faint. She followed him down the halls and the stairs to the morgue. She froze at the door before she could walk through. She had to fight for the strength to do this.  
  
They pulled out the body bag and unzipped it to the boy's face. He lay still as though sleeping, and his blondish brown hair stuck to his forehead. It was too much for Gina to take. She reached forward to grab him and hold him but was pulled back by Lt Thompson. She gasped as she saw blood along his neck and could see that the body bag lay oddly on the table. "What did he do to him!" she screamed unable to hold her tears. Lt Thompson grabbed hold of her and turned her to him and let her cry in to his shirt. That was enough of a positive identification then he needed.  
  
He slowly escorted her out into the hall and up the stairs to his office. All of the other policemen were looking at him as he sat her in a chair and let her cry. In their minds they judged her an unfit mother and they were very verbal about it when he walked in to the break room for a cup of coffee.  
  
"What kind of mother leaves her kid in the middle of the night?" one whispered.  
  
"She ain't no prom queen," another whispered. "I've seen her at the road motel on more the one occasion."  
  
"It could have been her." said another "A girl that young, tied down by a kid. Perhaps she hate's kids."  
  
"Shut up!" Lt Thompson said sternly. "She used to baby sit my daughter when she was little!"  
  
The other policemen looked at him like they had been caught smoking in the bathroom. Were they scared that his daughter may have been killed? Or that they were wrong? They wouldn't say.  
  
Later that week after the burial of her son, Gina Keller sat next to the turned earth and sat in silence for a long time. She had spoken to other parent's of missing or dead children, but they were not any help. Their children seemed to be as over looked as her own.  
  
'Who were these people to have been chosen for this?' she thought to herself. 'What made them such prime targets? Was it the fact that no one seemed to care about them in real life? The alcoholics, the trouble makers, the cruel people who hated you, so what if they are victims of murder, they don't have the white picked fences or welcome mat doors. They lived in low rent houses, picked up trash for a living or were considered trash themselves.'  
  
She stood with these thoughts in her head, and she walked silently away from the cemetery. She walked for a long time, until she noticed it was dark and she was walking towards the high school. That is when she noticed him. He was coming out of the side door of the school and to his car. She knew him, had seen him when she was in school. It was the janitor Fred Krueger leaving very late in the day. She watched as he tossed empty paper sacks and bottles from his front floorboard before getting in the car and screeching off. She watched until his tale lights were gone and then walked up to the trash. 'Some janitor' she thought. She reached down and picked up the wads of paper, and then noticed a crumpled paper airplane. Her heart stopped, and she was frozen with fear and anger. She unfolded the paper and saw Adam's doodles. She held it close and began to cry, but her fury couldn't be contained.  
  
She would take it to the police, evidence to convicted him of kidnapping, and they would investigate and arrest him and try him for murder...or would they?  
  
No, she realized. They would think her a grieving mother looking for proof when there was none. What did they care about her? Or the others? They didn't, but if it happened to them.they would care.  
  
And so the plan began.. 


	19. Chapter 17 In the Beginning Part 2

Chapter 17  
In the Beginning  
Part 2 October 28th 1974  
  
It had been difficult the last year to keep her secrets as she noticed more and more children disappearing. The role of the grieving mother wasn't as hard to play, but her mock cruelty was. During these last few months she had fought hard to get close to Fred Krueger. He on the other hand didn't seem to notice.  
  
From the time she walked in to the bar, defaced the back side of the signs coming in to town, to confessing false angst to get close to the murderer who she was positive who killed her son. She told of abuse from foster parents, and lied about her joy to be free of a child. And he believed her. And in the end he showed her everything.  
  
But why?  
  
It wasn't easy. Gina had to touch the darkness of him to even get close. But it was enough, and it was worth it just to get close. As she had done all of this more were missing, but she knew they would not be found. And then one day it happened.  
  
The evil touched the good people. And it was then she knew it was time. She left evidence in places where the police would find it, until they did catch him. But they had been sloppy in their catch. He was released.  
  
Gina sat silently in the back of the court room as the grieving parents cried. Fred Krueger had just been escorted from the courtroom where he would later be released. Gina had ducked behind bench until he was gone before she sat and listened to the angry ranting of mothers and fathers.  
  
"It's different now." She said finally. The room when silent and they turned to her. Lt Thompson's eyes widened. He had forgotten that it was her son that first made him aware to how real this was. His daughter had been kidnapped a month before.  
  
"What do you care?" said Doug Parker.  
  
"Oh I care." She said softly. "I know how it feels. And I can help you."  
  
"How can you help us?"  
  
"Cause I know where he goes." She confessed. They all walked in to the isle of the court room and huddled around her. "I know where he sleeps."  
  
"We can't talk about this here. We will meet at my house tomorrow evening.and if what you say is true."  
  
"Just be there." Gina said and turned and left.  
  
Later the next evening inside the Thompson's house Gina sat on the couch. Around her stood all of the parent's of murdered children. They had spoken all day about what to do, and only those who were willing to come and do what ever it took were there.  
  
They waited until Lt Thompson returned from a neighbors. He had dropped off his surviving child there so not to be awoken but the bitter parents standing in his living room.  
  
"I have a plan." Gina said. "This bastard murdered our children. And the government is not on our side. I know what I mean, cause my son has been dead for over a year with no one coming to my rescue. But I know who his killer is and I know how to make him pay."  
  
The room was silent as they listened to her words. She fed their fury as she described her loss and the police's lack of evidence and motivation. They felt abandoned and the system seemed unfair.  
  
"Krueger was found at the Springwood power plant basement, in the boiler room." She continued. "What is to say he didn't go back there? I say the bastard needs to burn in hell for what he has done.I say we send him there ourselves."  
  
The parents listened eagerly as Gina laid the plot for them. They were to meet her at plant at 5pm with bottle bombs and fuel. They would trace building with the fuel and use the bombs as starters. All they needed to do was show up.the hard part would be hers.  
  
She would meet Krueger at the high school to congratulate him on his victory over the system. She would bring a bottle of gin laces with a sedative so he would sleep soon after. She would shower him with complements and feed his ego with false plans for more murder.then she would lead him to his car where she would tell him sweet dreams.  
  
The trap would be set. 


	20. Chapter 18 In the Beginning Part 3

Chapter 18  
In the Beginning  
Part 3  
  
October 31st 1974  
  
8:30pm Springwood Power Plant  
  
Lt Thompson and Roger Caulfield tossed the empty gas cans in the back of the truck. They had carefully filled several bottles and stuffed them with old rags. It was a quick and simple juvenile explosive just what they needed. Each parent fueled their fury with every step up to the power plant. Their sons and daughters had all been killed by this man, and they would not let him get away with it.  
  
They staked out the building for hours, until they saw Krueger drive up and walk in to the plant. He stumbled around the side and down the basement steps. Once inside he hummed his little song while he lay in a stupor. "One...two.."  
  
He drank deep from his bottle and lay back resting his hand on his stomach. It was gloved with sharp knives at the fingers. Carelessly it fell to his side and slid across the ground. He laughed manically as the blades scraped the floor. He tugged his red and green sweater closer around his neck, humming his little song before passing out completely.  
  
Gina walked up to the parents and glanced down the window into the boiler down at Fred Krueger's sleeping body. "Time to send this fucker to hell burning."  
  
The Caulfield's and Parkers walked silently around front of the building and began to soak the floors with gasoline. Outside they tested the locks on the doors to make sure they were secure. Then from behind a line of cars pulled up. At first they thought it was the police coming to arrest them for their crime, but Gina and the others froze in the headlights as they watched the people exit the car. The persons reached in to the back sear and pulled out nailed boards and flashlights. It was the other parents that had not come to the meeting. They were just as angry and just as vicious. Gina watched as they unloaded arsenals of nailed boards and rusted blades.  
  
Mr. Stanton took a bunch of rocks from the back of an old truck and held them firm before throwing them down in to the glass windows the boiler. The glass shattered and the sleeping figure below barely mumbled before rolling over.  
  
Mr. Lane took hold of a bat with oiled rags and lit them aflame. Lt Thompson took a bottle he had prepared and lit it underneath the flame. Then as quickly as possible he threw the bottle down into the boiler casting the flames along the floor. More parent took bottles and threw them down in to the boiler. The flames exploded in a fury climbing across the floor and up the walls. The sleeping figure below woke suddenly as the flames caught hold of his clothes. He screamed and ran up the stairs to the outside. Gina ran to them and slammed them shut as 4 men came with boards to brace the door. Gina stared at the smoky glass as the figure behind it, slammed against the door. She watched as a blistered hand wiped ash from the window and looked straight at her. She froze unable to turn her eyes away as the figure cursed and slammed his fist against the glass.  
  
Unable to get thorough the door Fred Krueger gave up his pushing on the door. He had to hurry, the back of his sweater was burning him. 'I don't feel it.' He thought to himself. 'I don't feel.' He ran back through the flames to the inner steps. He climbed them to the top and slammed his fists against it. The splintered wood bracing the far side gave and he tumbled on to the gas soaked floor. This caused the rest of his clothes to be set aflame as well as the rest of the hallway. In a fit of anger he ran as fast as he could down the hall and threw himself out the manager's office window and fell upon the ground still burning. He tossed his flaming body from side to side trying to roll out the fire. The parent jeered and stared at the burning body. Having finally given in to his pain he screamed at them.  
  
"All your children shall be mine!" His voice screamed. The sound echoed from normal to deep as it seemed his vocal cords began to melt in the heat. Rasps and gasps he looked over at Gina with blood shot eyes. "Until the last die!" He succumb to the pills she had slipped into his drink. He let the pain go and began to dream. His body convulsed as he continued to burn.  
  
"For God's sake!" Mrs. Thompson screamed. She took hold of her husband's gun and shot the burnt man twice in the chest. The body stopped shaking and lay still. All of the parent looked down at the stink of man still crisping in the night air and a shutter forced its way though them.  
  
Gina looked down at him and turned away. Her vengeance was done. She watched as the other parents took hold of his limp body and threw him back down in to the boiler. "Bones would be better to get rid of then a body." Walter Lantz said putting his hand on Lt Thompson's shoulder.  
  
The body fell down in to the boiler and the last of the kerosene did its job. Marge Thompson stepped closer to the burn mark left by his body and picked up the blades that had fallen from his hand. She ran to her car and wrapped them securely in an old towel and hid them under the seat. The other parents were so consumed with watcher the body burn they didn't seem to notice her.  
  
Nor did they notice Gina Keller backing away from the building and staring as the fire ate what was able to burned and left behind only brick walls. It wasn't until the last had burned upon the brick walls that the fire department came. They cooled the smoldering ambers of what was left and entered the sweltering steam of the boiler. Lt Thompson carefully removed the bones that remained. He stuffed them into a sack and left the crime scene. No one seemed to care much about a missing murderer and an abandon burnt power plant. And that was just as well to them.  
  
Gina thought about the words he had said in his dieing breath. She wondered how much truth was in them. Was he dead when they threw him in the fire again? Had he truly died? For a moment she almost believed she had seen him breathe. But this wasn't true.it couldn't be. Fred Krueger was dead. But inside all the parent's souls.he had burned his final message.  
  
"All your children shall be mine..until the last die." 


	21. Chapter 19 Digging Up The Past

Chapter 19  
Digging up the Past  
  
The old diary and clippings scattered in the hall were enough to spell out the evil Gina Keller had done in her past to connect her to the murders of the Elm Street Children. After her own son was murdered she fed Fred Krueger's thirst for murder to the children of Elm. She had to, in her own mind, do this so that they would help her. It was a dark year in her past. One she fought to hide by moving away, one she tried to bury by shedding light in the dark and proving the ghosts wrong. But in the end she had proven them right.  
  
"I don't have much time." Melissa said breaking the silence in the room. "I murdered my mother." She confessed.  
  
"It wasn't you." Alice pleaded with her. Melissa looked her in the eyes and smiled briefly.  
  
"Prove it." she said. "It may not have been me driving, but it was my hands." She looked down at the blood stains crusting her fingers and shuddered. "We have tonight only." She explained. "Just tonight. We have to bury him.really bury him."  
  
"We can't" said Neil Gordon. Alice and Melissa looked at him shocked. "His bones are gone."  
  
"Where are they!" Alice pleaded. She was consumed with fear. She had a son to go home to and a life to piece back together. She couldn't die.not now. It didn't take long for her to figure it out. "Andrea." She whispered.  
  
Melissa looked up at her and she too knew. "She was the one who told me about this. But she tried to warn me!"  
  
"All this didn't happen by accident" Neil said. "We might not all survive this, but after so many years.I'm ready for it to be over."  
  
"So am I." Alice said wistfully. "Then let's end it." Melissa said. "And I think I know how."  
  
Melissa grabbed her mother's keys from the table and tossed them to Alice. "You drive." She then went to Doctor Gordon. "Mom's notes mention."  
  
"I know." He said. "I'll be ready. Where should I meet you?"  
  
"Where else? 1428 Elm Street."  
  
Alice drove to Andrea house per Melissa's instructions and they got out of the car. She handed the keys to Neil. "Be back soon." She said. He took the keys and nodded.  
  
Melissa and Alice watched as he drove away. It felt as though their hope were leaving with him. Melissa took a deep breath and walked back up the walk way to Andrea's house. She opened the front door and stepped inside and waited for Alice to follow. "How did you know it would be open?" She asked. Melissa looked back and smiled. "I didn't."  
  
She walked quickly down the hall and through the kitchen the basement door. She could hear scrambling below as she opened the door. Melissa wasted no time jumping down the stairs and slamming in to Andrea as she tried to escape up the stairs. The two girls fell to the floor with a thud. Melissa got up and saw she had Andrea pined beneath her. She pulled Andrea to her feet and threw her against the wall. She had no idea how she got the strength to do it, perhaps it was the evil still in her veins. She didn't know nor did she care. She was furious.  
  
"Melissa, hi" She said calmly.  
  
"You bitch!" Melissa screamed. Before she knew it she had Andrea's neck in hand and her head against the wall. "You are the one who brought that bastard back! Little miss rich bitch and all her money, too bored with normal life, you had to make them all remember, didn't you. You had to let them all play along in your little game."  
  
Andrea just stared at her.  
  
"Where is it?" Melissa screamed. Andrea still stared at her without emotion. Melissa jarred her hard against the wall and asked her again in a calm deadly voice. "Where is it?"  
  
"In the closet." She said. Melissa took one last swing and her fist lay across Andrea's jaw sending her falling in to the floor. She then turned and went to the closet. She pulled the door open and looked, but could not find what she was looking for. She looked in the bottom of the closet, and in the top, but it wasn't until she noticed the loose panel in the ceiling that she knew. She stood up and tip toe and put her hands in the hole. She removed the old sack. It was dirty and stiff. He was so close at that moment. More close and more real then he had ever been, for in her hands were his bones. She then reached up and pulled out the box. It was a ouji board.  
  
"You want to play, then you play." She said. Melissa turned around and handed Alice the board and held the bones. At that moment Andrea let her fear show and backed away.  
  
"I'm not going. You can't make me." Andrea then noticed Melissa's clothes. They were covered with blood and she could see where she was developing bruises under her skin.  
  
"I can't?" Melissa taunted. "Why not? I say I can. As sure as I am that this is my mother's blood, I say I can." She reached forward and grabbed her by her hair and pushed Andrea up the stairs.  
  
From behind her they walked. Andrea wasn't about to run. She knew they would have caught her easily.  
  
"So.Why did you bring him back?" Alice asked.  
  
"Not like I really planed it." Andrea replied.  
  
"Like hell you didn't plan it." Melissa stated trying to hold back her fury.  
  
"The news papers caught my interest when my parent's moved here." She confessed. "Daddy thought it was a nice piece of land to develop. Didn't realize how much of a bitch it would be to sell though. It was a week in to the development when I found the articles in the library. I thought it would be fun. A little ghost story I could play with. It was then that I found the others. Mostly by name association, I was able to convince them I was being tormented by nightmares."  
  
"The cuts on your arm?" Melissa asked.  
  
"Self inflicted months ago. Only after they had healed was I able to convince you they were from when I was a child. When the other deaths started happening, the others got scared. I got excited. I wanted to meet this boogey man everyone was scared of."  
  
"How did you do it?"  
  
"I found the bones from the report of where Lt Donald Thompson was found. From there it took me all night to dig them up. I placed them in a crate underneath the Ouji board, hoping they would help channel his spirit, but all I got was a bunch of dead kids."  
  
"You were the one who brought them back!" Alice gasped.  
  
"Channeling the spirits of the dead was enough for them, but not me. I wanted real proof."  
  
They turned down on Elm Street and continued to walk.  
  
"I wanted to know what it was the others saw in their dreams. I thought it was interesting that all these kids had the same dreams, and couldn't find the thread that connected them."  
  
"So you decided to make their boogieman real?" Melissa asked. Andrea chuckled.  
  
"It wasn't too hard." She said. "All it took was pointing out some circumstantial deaths around Elm and they bought it hook line and sinker."  
  
"How were you sure the deaths weren't real?"  
  
"Cause it never is real." Andrea explained. "I mean really, in the end it is all just a bunch of circumstantial evidence with no proof! And I have to confess it was all worth it. When Melissa went nuts and brought you back, it was too good to be true."  
  
"You mean you don't believe any of this is real? You were just trying to scare them?"  
  
"No! I was trying to prove that it was real..But I can't! Cause it's not! Honestly! Melissa there is just crazy! She killed her own mother! And you..well what can I say Alice, perhaps you just need to get some sleep." Alice grabbed Andrea from behind spun her around and smacked her in the face.  
  
"The hell it's not true! My God! What is it with you? What proof do you need?"  
  
"He was just some psycho you keep blaming on your problems. When will you take responsibility for them yourself! When will you just get on with your life..when...when.."  
  
She suddenly stopped talking. Alice was staring behind her. Andrea turned quickly and that is when they saw the light inside the Elm Street house was on. Andrea's breath quickened and she ran to the house. "No!" She cried and she stuffed her hands in to her pockets searching for the key. Alice and Melissa ran after her as she shoved the door open and ran inside. Alice froze, afraid to enter the house. Melissa had to pull her through the door way. It was then that Alice noticed the house was not as she had remembered. It was clean and bright. She could still smell the fresh paint. The rooms were completely empty but for the light coming from an old lamp in the corner of the carpet in the living room. Melissa pulled Alice's shirt to get her attention to the open basement door. Alice nodded and they both walked over to it and looked down. Andrea sat on the steps and was crying. Alice and Melissa walked down after her and that is when they saw them. Lying in a heap on the floor were the remains of the "nightmare society" They were all dead and cold on the basement floor. Melissa however didn't care about Andrea sobbing on the steps.  
  
"You wanted to play." She said and kicked Andrea down the rest of the steps and to the ground. "Then we play" Andrea sobbed and flinched away from the dead bodies.  
  
Alice threw the bag of bones at her and she caught them.  
  
"Are we going to use the board?" She asked.  
  
"It won't do us any good to try." Melissa said. "He took all the souls."  
  
"Then I guess we go in after him." Melissa flinched and clutched her stomach. She tossed forward and gripped the furnace. "Melissa!" Alice pleaded. Her hands again began to bleed through the bandages and when her blood came in contact with the metal surface of the furnace it began to sizzle despite the frigid temperature. Melissa pulled away from it and held her hands close, but the fever in her head was too strong. She spun quickly but as she faced Alice and Andrea her face was not her own. The skin seemed to be burning while she looked at them. Her eyes changed and were not her own. They again became red and blood shot.  
  
"Almost time." A voice came growling from her throat. Alice knew that voice. It had tormented her for years.  
  
"Leave her alone!" she screamed. But using Melissa's body he pulled at the rusted handle to the old furnace and removed an old soiled cloth. Wrapped within it the dull bulb above exposed the remains of his gloved claw. Melissa's face looked up. Sweat began to pour from her skin more frequently as she took the glove and spread it blade out and the seductively licked one of the crusty tips. The eyes inside Melissa's head rolled back in ecstasy as she savored the taste. Alice cringed at the sight. Was there any part of Melissa still inside? There must have been cause the glove slipped from her fingers on to the floor and her face returned to normal, only she looked like the sick girl Alice had first seen, her hair dripping with sweat and her tired eyes weak. Desperately she lunged for Alice and went limp in her arms.  
  
"Help me." Melissa pleaded. "He can't stay buried for long." And her eyes closed. Alice shook her trying to wake her but she didn't awaken. Her breathing became slow and deep and her temperature still rose inside her.  
  
Andrea looked around the room still unable to believe that she was trapped in a basement among her dead friends. Friends she had tricked in to resurrecting this evil. An Evil she had just seen manifest itself inside of Melissa. Melissa was the only person who truly seemed to be tortured by her game. Fred Krueger was inside her. Trying to burn out what was left of her from the inside.  
  
Alice laid Melissa down on the floor and took hold of the ouji board. She thrust the boned inside the old crate spread the board out on top of it. In a fit of anger she reached forward and pulled Andrea's hands on to the pointer. "You made this happen; you're going to help me finish it." Andrea tried to pull away but Alice wouldn't let her.  
  
"What the hell do you want me to do?" She asked bitterly.  
  
"There is one soul I haven't seen claimed yet. I say we summon it."  
  
Andrea's mind raced. Who was she going to try to contact that she hadn't already given to Freddy on a silver platter? Alice didn't explain. She didn't have much time. Melissa was growing weaker, and she wasn't sure how long she could keep Freddy busy before she could get inside. Her poor voice echoed inside Alice's ears. "Help me!"  
  
"It's okay Melissa," she whispered "I'm trying." 


	22. Chapter 20 Hide and Seek

Chapter 20  
Hide and Seek  
  
Melissa crouched down in a corner next to the massive boiler. It seemed she was alone in the dank place. She had not heard a single screech or step from Fred Krueger the whole time she hid. 'What is he waiting for?' She thought. She stood cautiously and slowly stepped around to the front of the boiler. She looked in to the open flames where the bodies had been burned and the evil forged. As she looked in to the flames however she saw only the gold light they cast upon the walls and her face. It took only the feeling of this heat to awaken the reason she could not find Fred Krueger.  
  
It started as a slow burn in her chest. She backed away from the fire and held her chest tight as the burn began to increase. Then she could almost feel the ribs inside her body crack as a force so strong she knocked back on to the floor exploded from her chest and leaped in to the flames. The bruised pain was almost too much to bare. She rolled on to her side and pulled herself away from the boiler. She ached as though ever vain in her body had suddenly retched itself from her skin, but it was only a shadow of the pain she knew was to come. She moaned in agony as she reached the 10th foot away from the heat and fell back against a warm pipe.  
  
She looked up then and stared in to the flames and she knew where he had been hiding. Fred Krueger had hitched a ride within her to get to his glove and when she fought him back inside she had angered him greatly. He had released himself from her and threw himself back in to the fire, and it was there he reemerged.  
  
The flames collected forming a solid mass. Large and round this mass snaked out of the boiler to reveal a huge head of fire. The yellows and orange flamed formed the features of the burned man and stared at her with evil eyes.  
  
"You bitch!" it growled.  
  
"What do you care; you psycho motherfucker!" Melissa screamed. She had had enough of having her stings pulled. "Kill me and get it over with!" She picked up a near by loose pipe and threw it into the glowing head, but it past threw him landing red hot on the other side. The massive head chuckled and stared at her.  
  
"I don't think so, little girl." He replied. "I've got much more planned for you."  
  
Meanwhile inside the basement of 1428 Elm Street Alice closed her eyes and thought hard of the soul that had saved them so many times. Then she felt it. The pointer twitched and slid across the board. It stopped at 'Yes'. Alice could feel Andrea shaking through the pointer as the pointer circled the board.  
  
"Who is this?" Andrea asked. The pointer slid to letters A.M.A.N.D.A. Before the pointer could finish Alice breathed a sigh of relief.  
  
"Amanda, this is Alice." She said.  
  
The pointer slid to 'Yes'.  
  
"He's back. He's claimed all the souls he ever had now, and he keeps hijacking this girl's body." Alice explained.  
  
'Yes'  
  
"How can he do this?" She asked.  
  
P.U.T.T.O.R.E.S.T.  
  
"Put to rest?" Andrea questioned.  
  
"But we have tried, you have tried, why won't he rest?"  
  
S.O.U.L.M.U.S.T.R.E.L.E.A.S.E  
  
"How do we release him?"  
  
S.A.C.R.F.I.C.E  
  
Alice sat stunned as the pointer circled.  
  
"His soul must be released through sacrifice?"  
  
'No'  
  
S.O.U.L.S.A.C.R.I.F.I.C.E.S.E.L.F  
  
"Soul sacrifices self?" Andrea asked.  
  
Alice was equally stumped by this. It seemed as though the spirit was speaking in riddles.  
  
'goodbye'  
  
"Damn it!" Alice cursed and threw the pointer across the room.  
  
"What do we do now?" Andrea asked bitterly. Alice sighed and looked around the room. The bodies in the corner, the furnace beside them, the rope...the rope!  
  
Alice reached over and grabbed the rope next to them and pushed the crate away. She took Melissa's hands and tied them to the brace underneath the steps, then bound her feet tightly.  
  
"What are you doing?" Andrea asked.  
  
"He is able to take her while she sleeps, so incase he does.I'm tying her up. We'll be safer."  
  
"No, I'm going home and there I'll be safer." Andrea got up and prepared to leave, but Alice stepped in from of her, blocking her from the stairs.  
  
"No you don't." Alice warned. "You started this, your going to help me finish it. I'm not going in their alone. So you go back over their tie that sack of bone really tight and sit your ass down!"  
  
Andrea did as she was told and sat down and Alice sat on the landing at the foot of the steps. She rubbed her eyes slowly and breathed deep fighting back the anxiety she felt. She felt her heart be slow and she leaned back against the wall and stared over to Andrea and sat nervously across her. Alice's eyes drooped and she laid her head back against the wall and thought 'Melissa'. The room suddenly felt warmer, and soon after stickier. Alice opened her eyes and she awake inside the boiler room. She saw the flaming head over Melissa who was lying on the floor under it. The flaming head turned and saw Alice enter. Alice flinched when she saw the face, twisted and scared and made of fire. She turned and ran away from it only to face a metal door. She took hold of the handle and felt a force push her through the door. Alice opened her eyes then and noticed she was no longer in the boiler. She was lying in the grass at the Springwood Cemetery. She got up slowly and looked around until she saw a row of stones. Each plot burned and aluminates the headstone. Alice swallowed thickly as she stepped closer to them to read who they were.  
  
She didn't have to read them, for in her heart she knew who they were. She read the names of her brother, her friends, then her father, and last her son.  
  
"Fuck you!" She screamed. "The hell I'll let you get to them!"  
  
A flame rose from the grave of her son and formed the body of a man. He stepped from the flames and materialized as Freddy Krueger. Alice backed away from him and suddenly fell down back over another headstone, only the fall didn't stop her. She fell down in to an empty grave; the stone above etched her own name. "NO!" she screamed. Freddy stood over the grave at her and smiled.  
  
"Rest in pieces bitch!" and he took hold of a shoved and threw the dirt down on to her. 


	23. Chapter 21 Playing the Game

Chapter 21  
Playing the Game  
  
Andrea sat next to the furnace and looked up at the scorched blood left behind on the cool surface. She saw the torn glove and its razor claws laying next Melissa who still lay asleep on the floor. Carefully she picked up the rusty knives and threw them back in the cold furnace, and then carefully glanced back to Alice. Alice flinched in her sleep, leaned against the wall letting her hands fall to her side. Andrea knew this was only the beginning of her nightmare and she would need to get out and away from them even to save her own skin. Carefully she tiptoed over the two of them and walked up the steps to the landing. She pulled the door open and breathed a deep breath away from the death under them. She was almost out, almost away from them, but not for long. A sudden pull was felt in the back of her mind. "No" she cried, but it was too late. Before she could reach the front door she fell limp and lifeless to the floor, but to her it didn't stop there, she kept falling through the floor and didn't stop until she hit the soft moist ground. Dazed Andrea looked around and saw she was in a cemetery. Not far from her graves blazed and she could see Freddy standing over one shoveling in dirt.  
  
A panic entered her. "This isn't real!" she whispered to herself. "This isn't real", but as she did she knew Freddy felt her enter the dream space. He looked evil down at Alice who was sinking in the soft mud. The ground under her was thick and she couldn't move to clime out.  
  
"Stay!" He shouted to her and from the dirt around her skeleton hands, and sharp roots reached through wrapping themselves around her and against the wall. There sharp edges dug in to her skin as she struggled.  
  
Freddy turned from his pit and looked over to Andrea's direction. He grinned a twisted smile and let his decayed teeth show. "Andrea" He called in a sing-song way. "Come out, come out. It's time to play." Andrea inched closer behind a tombstone and tried to calm her breathing but it wasn't working. Suddenly from around her hands thrust up from under the earth and people crawled out and grabbed her. All around her were the Nightmare Society, all of them dead, their faces showing hatred at her.  
  
"You killed us." They screamed. "You murdering bitch!" They clawed at her skin and pulled her down in to the earth with them as she fought to break free.  
  
"No! No! It wasn't me! I didn't do it!" she cried as her feet were pulled in to the ground. "I didn't! I swear I didn't know!"  
  
Then the pulling stopped and a warm crusty hand gripped her throat and pulled her out of the ground, kicking the hands of the dead away from her. Andrea looked up and saw that Freddy had her in his grip and was dangling her above a flaming grave.  
  
"But you see, what you didn't know then you know now." He growled. Andrea held tight to his arm and cried.  
  
"No! Please!" Freddy smiled enjoying the sound of pleading coming from the girl. He held tight to her and lowered her closer to the flames. "NO!" she cried. Suddenly he pulled her away from the fire and closer to him on solid ground.  
  
"You're no better then they were, but you thought you were, didn't you?" He said coldly. "I don't repay no favors." He held his claw back and brought it down to Andrea's throat but stopped short of cutting her. Andrea closed her eyes, but when she noticed the pain didn't come, and the blood didn't pour she opened them and saw he was still holding her, the blades were right next to her, but nothing else was happening. She breathed a sigh of release.  
  
"You can't kill me can you?" She said. "I helped you, you owe me."  
  
"Not likely little girl." He growled again. And he grabbed her by her hair pulled her throat back and sliced her neck. The hot blood filled her mouth and poured down her shirt. He let her fall then. "No, I don't owe you." He watched as Andrea stumbled to her feet, but didn't die, he had sliced her neck, but only so she couldn't speak. He watched as she ran away from him and collapsed over Alice's grave. Andrea looked down in to the grave and saw Alice still alive held against the wall. Alice saw her as well, pale white in the night but for the bright red smeared over her mouth and neck. Alice struggled harder to get loose to help the dying girl but she was stuck.  
  
"Andrea!" She called to her. "Fight! If you want to live damn it! FIGHT!" but Andrea didn't fight, she wasn't a fighter. She was just a poor little rich girl who liked to play games. Freddy stood over Andrea from behind. He watched as Andrea tried to reach down to Alice for help, but with a swift movement he pulled her away out of Alice's view. The only thing she could see was Freddy standing over her and the plunge of his blades down on her, but no scream came. It was a silent death but for the grunts of effort as Freddy scraped bone and tore flesh.  
  
For Andrea, the game was over.  
  
Alice screamed and tugged at the roots and bones that held her and thought franticly. 'I can get out of this! I am the Dream Master!' and the nursery rhyme played in her head. "Now I lay me down to sleep, the master of dreams, my soul I'll keep" then she felt a tug at the roots and hands. She looked back to the muddy wall and saw globs of dirt fall and a hole open. A hand reached out and grabbed her. Alice flinched away but stopped when she saw Melissa was the one pulling.  
  
"How did you find me?" she asked, knowing she had not even thought of Melissa to pull her in to her dream.  
  
"I don't know I just felt you." She replied. They hugged briefly and Melissa pulled Alice in to the hole with her. "Hurry before he notices." And Alice lifted into the hole and crawled past Melissa. Melissa glanced back as Freddy smeared Andrea's blood all in his hands and laughed. But he felt her presence as much as she had felt Alice's. Freddy turned and saw Melissa looking up at him from the hole and anger burning in his eyes. He leaped down in to the grave and lunged at her. Melissa meanwhile turned and began to crawl through the dirt. "Hurry!" She screamed to Alice. From behind her Freddy reached his arm which stretched and grabbed Melissa's ankle, but she wasn't about to let him get her. She kicked his hand away and scurried faster after Alice.  
  
Alice could feel Melissa's panic behind her and kept crawling until she saw a yellow light at the far end. Alice lunged for the opening and the mud slipped causing her to fall on to the hard concrete floor of the boiler room. She looked around and saw Melissa had smashed away old brink to the dirt and had crawled through her dream to get to her. Alice stood up and looked back to the whole and reached inside for Melissa. Melissa was almost to her when she suddenly was pulled back several feet. Melissa kicked and crawled again to Alice who held tight to her and pulled. Melissa put her arms around her and Alice pulled harder. The force suddenly released and Melissa fell out of the hole and in to Alice's arms. Melissa quickly crawled out of the way expecting Freddy to follow her through the hole, but nothing happened. She looked over at Alice and sighed in exhaustion.  
  
"How did you find me?" Alice asked again.  
  
"I don't know." She replied. "Maybe.maybe he's prepping me, making me like him so he can take over?" Alice nodded.  
  
"Sounds logical" she said helping her up from the ground. "We need to get you out of here. We will all be safer if you were awake"  
  
"Well that looks good on paper" She replied "But it's the getting me awake part that is the problem. He keeps me here, where he can reach me."  
  
"But that is what we need to figure out, how can he reach you and not me?" She asked.  
  
"Because I'm the last." She answered "I am honestly the last of the people who killed him. I'm his unfinished business, and if he can keep me alive, he can live."  
  
"He is trying to take you over, so he can live forever. If he can live inside you, he can live on through you and through your children." Alice cringed at the thought of him inside Jacob. "He can make you like him and he can live on in your dreams, and continue to hunt through them, like one big game of hide and seek!"  
  
"Well that wouldn't be right, I mean if I die, his battle is over, and this all ends." 


	24. Chapter 22 The Mind of Madness

Chapter 22.1  
The Mind of Madness  
  
Freddy perched high upon a catwalk above the two girls as they spoke. He glared at Melissa who embodies his final conquest, and Alice who had escaped him too many times. Perhaps killing Andrea was too hasty a move. She had been nice enough to summon the souls of his victims so that he could reach beyond the grave a last time to kill even with out a mortal tie to his victims. No, they were not "Elm Street" Children. They had just been on Elm, an inch too close to get away. But he wanted out, out of the prison, to be able to leave springwood, infect to world, and if he could inhabit Melissa, he would do this. He could kill forever, but the fact that she was figuring this out herself was too much for him to bare. 'How dare she think she knows me? Stinking little bitch!" He wanted to knock her off her high horse for thinking that he couldn't kill her. He gripped his claw and dug the blades into his own hand to feel the pain, and have it mask his anger, but being dead it didn't have the same affect it once did in life. Worst of all he hated that she was right. He needed them both.  
  
He stood up and scraped his claw across the rail in front of him. Alice and Melissa looked up at him and gasped. He jumped from the catwalk down to them below. He landed hard, but still stood. 'You can't predict what I'm going to do you little pig!' he thought in a rage. He leaped towards Melissa and slammed her against the wall. Alice gasped at the speed Freddy possessed to be able to push past her before she knew it. Alice leaped up behind him and took hold of his claw. "Leave her alone!" she cried but as she pulled him back she noticed her form lighten. She felt lighter and her vision of the boiler faded. Gravity held her limbs. She could feel the weight of her body pressing against the floor. Her head felt heavy, an obvious side effect of the drugs she had taken earlier. Then she noticed she was been shook awake. "Alice!" a voice called desperately as she opened her heavy eyelids.  
  
"Doctor Gordon?" she said faintly. She opened her eyes wider and noticed it was him standing over her. She then remembered where she was and what had happened. She sat up quickly and looked around the small basement. Melissa still lay tired up and the bag of bones still lay underneath the crate. However Andrea was not there. "Andrea!" she gasped.  
  
"I know.I know" he said. "What happened?" he asked.  
  
"I pulled her in." she whispered as tears stung her eyes. "I didn't mean to. I was scared and I thought of her and then she was there...and now she's gone." Neil put his harm around Alice to comfort her but Alice brushed him away. "Melissa's still in there." She said.  
  
"We have to get her out." He said turning to the sleeping girl. He opened her eyes, but they still remained rolled back in to her head. Bruises began to appear on her skin, and small cuts appeared on her knuckles.  
  
"Don't worry Neil." Alice said calmly. "He won't kill her..He can't kill her. If he kills her, then he dies." Neil looked at Alice with wide eyed amazement. "She is the last." He nodded and glanced around the room.  
  
"What do we do now?" he asked. "He needs her alive to live. What then?"  
  
"He needs me to get his victims." She confessed. "He needs my power, Kristen's power to reach the dreams of others."  
  
"But he has been reaching others with out you."  
  
"Only as far as his power can reach.his power." Alice looked over to the furnace. "His weapon." Neil reached up and removed the rag with the rusted claw.  
  
"No wonder he keeps bringing the Children here, it's the source of his power, inside a furnace"  
  
"Inside his boiler room." Neil nodded and put the blades in to a leather case near by and then took the bones from the crate.  
  
"I didn't do this right the last time." He said "I need to do this properly."  
  
"Do what?"  
  
"Bury him."  
  
Alice looked over at Melissa whose skin began to grow pale and sweat poured from her skin. "We better do it quick, if he weakens her too much we may never be able to wake her."  
  
Carefully Neil and Alice gathered up Melissa and Freddy's remains and pulled them up the stairs. Alice nearly dropped Melissa when she saw Andrea's body in the living room. She had been impaled on top of the lamp, however cuts beyond the broken glass would need more explaining the just a broken lamp shade. Alice looked away and continues out of the house and to Neil's car. They put Melissa in the back seat and the bag with Freddy and his claw in the trunk.  
  
Meanwhile Melissa was being beat within an inch of her life. Freddy took his time torturing the girl, and he did so with a smile on his face. Melissa stumbled to her feet after her more resent impact with the wall and smirked.  
  
"You can't kill me." She said. Freddy again grabbed her by the neck and pulled her to him.  
  
"I might not be able to kill you, but you'll be surprised what you can live thru." And he tossed her against the wall again. He picked up a broken pipe and spun it around in his hands and glared at her. "It takes a lot to die, I should know. They have tried to kill me many times. After a while you think they would understand." Then he swung the pipe and smacked Melissa in the stomach head and on her back until she again was on the floor. "You can't kill what is already dead!" He noticed blood coming from Melissa's mouth and threw the pipe away. 'Mustn't kill the whore yet' he thought. Instead he leaned against the burning furnace, the heat not fazing him.  
  
"They always think pulling me out of the dream will kill me." He chuckled. "What a pile of shit. You would think they would give up on that theory after it failed, but no. That is what they always try to do."  
  
"So," Melissa wheezed in between coughs. "You can't die even if you're pulled out?"  
  
"Duh shit Sherlock." He mumbled "you catch on quick. Hell no I won't die. You can't kill what's already dead!" and he laughed. Melissa stood and looked past him in to the flames.  
  
"Then die!" she screamed and ran to the flames throwing herself in, but the fire never reached her, Freddy pulled her back and again tossed her to the floor.  
  
"Not so quick, little bitch" he growled. "That's not in the rules."  
  
"You make no since!" she screamed "If I die you die, damn it!"  
  
"Exactly! I can't let you go waking up and slitting those pretty wrists, now can I?" he said coldly "Don't think this is fun for me, I've never wanted to kill something as bad as I want to kill you. I mean you look exactly like your fucking mother."  
  
Melissa breathed deep and relaxed. "My mom..she really got to you didn't she?" but even that was too much for him to hear, he ran towards her and punched her in the mouth with his metal knuckles. Again her mouth filled with blood and she spit it out on to the floor. "She did a real number on you."  
  
"She just assisted in the inevitable." He growled. "But you know something princess, your momma was a twisted as me. If you don't believe it then that's your problem. But what do you think she had to do to get that close to me? It took a lot more then a bottle of gin, however it didn't take me that long to get in to her pants." The taunts began to get under Melissa's skin too. "Trying to help those kids, that's just her way of trying to get to heaven after killing them."  
  
"LIAR!" she screamed.  
  
"Come on? Who's your daddy?" he laughed  
  
"Sure the hell isn't you!" she screamed.  
  
"That's for damn sure." He spat. "But think about it, if a killer was inside your mother, do you think there is a little killer in you too?"  
  
"Only enough to kill you." She muttered. Freddy chuckled. He had another hero on his hands. Another want-to-be saint who thinks she can kill him. Melissa got up and ran towards him in to the furnace, the hot metal burning her arm and she pulled him away from it. Freddy pushed her away from him but still she came at him.  
  
"Bitch's gone crazy!" he yelled as she tossed her away from him again.  
  
"Come on Freddy!" she screamed, "Not going to fight me? Scared? Come on!" she picked up a pipe and hit him with it. Freddy reached up and took the pipe from her hands and swung it back at her. Melissa jumped back. "That's better!" she screamed, "Come and get me." And Freddy watched as Melissa ran to a wall, and walked right through it.  
  
"What the hell?" he asked himself. He had never seen a victim able to leave his dreams, but no..she was not a normal victim.  
  
'As I lay me down to sleep, the master of dreams, my soul I'll keep'. That would explain why she was able to find her way to Alice, and how she was able to be protected by the souls. Melissa was a true adversary, she was a dream master. 


	25. Chapter 23 The Master of Dreams

Chapter 23.1  
The Master of Dreams  
  
Alice and Doctor Neil Gordon drove past the gates of Westin Hill and on towards the cemetery. Alice's heartbeat still thudded in her ears as the car made it's way slowly threw the paths that intertwined through the grounds. "Where is it? Where is it?" Neil muttered to himself. Alice looked up to hopefully see what ever it was he was looking for, but all she saw was the many stones that lined the earth. In the back seat Melissa whimpered slightly as she turned in her sleep. Alice glanced back at her and saw the new bruises and bloody lip now on her face. She would do anything if only she would open her eyes, or have the souls speak through her again, but she knew this was not possible. Freddy had claimed those souls from their rest and he knew she had to release them before anymore damage was caused.  
  
Suddenly Alice jerked forward as Neil quickly stomped the breaks. Alice rubbed her neck, she was lucky she didn't get whiplash. She looked at Neil who sat frozen staring out to the cemetery towards a tree. He knew that beyond that tree was his only salvation. Quickly he opened the door and stepped out. He walked to the trunk and opened the latch and took out another sack, different then the one Freddy's bones were in. "What's that?" she asked.  
  
"An old friend" he replied. And it was then Alice knew who he had in his hands.  
  
"Where did you find her?" she asked.  
  
"Where she was left" He said. He took a shovel in hand and motioned to Alice to follow. She reached inside and grabbed another shovel and followed him. Then he told Alice all he knew of the body in the bag.  
  
"Amanda Krueger disappeared in 1968. Evidence left behind suspected she may have killed herself, or was murdered. Either way she was never seen from again. Because of her disappearance and the lack of police involvement the monastery assumed she had died and laid her memory to rest, putting up merely a tombstone here in the cemetery. What they didn't know was she wasn't dead, and in fact never really left."  
  
"I don't understand." Alice said as they walked closer to the tree and turned. Neil reached in to the bag and pulled out a flashlight and shined it down on the stone at the tree's base. 'Amanda Krueger, Her name in Christ Sister Mary Helena'  
  
Neil began to shovel dirt out of the grave, and Alice followed, digging deeper in to the ground.  
  
"Part of Krueger's defense in his trial was the fact that he seemed to grieve over the loss of his mother, and often came to the monastery to bring her flowers. The staff though confused or even frightened by this behavior let him by as he walked the halls late at night."  
  
"But this date is all wrong." Alice noticed. "It's 1968. Fred Krueger didn't die until 1974."  
  
"So you see the truth."  
  
"They said she went crazy after his trial, killed herself."  
  
"Not true."  
  
"He had her didn't he?"  
  
"Yes." Neil explained "He had held her captive in the tower, which had been abandoned. She was locked in there for days, month, and years. We can only guess how he kept her alive, what he did to her, or even if she tried to escape. She was an old woman at this time, she couldn't fight back. After his capture, he was locked away for a whole month until his trial. When he was release he came back to find her, barley alive, reduced to an animal to survive, but her faith still intact, insisting God would save her. That is when he bricked her in."  
  
"That's where Yvonne left her?"  
  
"Yes," he replied. "And where I found her. No one knew where she was. The tower was her tomb."  
  
"Until Yvonne found her?"  
  
"Yes," he confirmed  
  
"How did she die?" Alice asked.  
  
"Starvation some would think, or perhaps he killed her before he bricked it up. This is not the case, so I found out."  
  
Their grave was nearly four feet deep by this point. He laid his shovel on the side of the grave and took the bag. Carefully he stepped out of the grave and reached in to the back taking out the bones. His knowledge of anatomy helped him in laying the bones out. First Alice thought he laid out a sheet, but it turned out to be an old nun's habit. Then he laid the bones on top of them.  
  
"I found the tower had been re-bricked after she was found. I hoped she was still in there, and I was right. I removed the bricks and found the old bricks still lay beyond it. It was a crime scene of gruesome detail. The windows open, the birds flying around, and dried blood that no one would have noticed unless they honestly looked for it."  
  
Neil held up a rib bone and Alice saw the four cuts in the bone.  
  
"He killed her?"  
  
"But here's the tricky part.there was blood on the bricks."  
  
"What?"  
  
"On the other side of the door, the bricks, and even on the floor, there was dried blood. She died in the room after she was bricked in."  
  
"How?"  
  
Neil just looked at her as though the answer was right in front of her.  
  
"She was the first person he killed.in dreams!" Neil nodded "But how is that possible, how can he even enter our dreams?"  
  
"I've had several theories on that, but only God knows how he ever did it to begin with."  
  
"This has nothing to do with God."  
  
"Either way it happened, I know that he killed Amanda, and then wasn't heard from for 10 years."  
  
"What happened in 10 years?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
Alice sighed in frustration and continued to dig as Neil pieced together Amanda's remains. Her mind swam with possible theories. She had glanced at Gina's Keller's notes on Maggie Burroughs while they were at the house and remember her theory was 'Dream Demons'. Personally it seemed like a fairytale and far to simple to be the truth.  
  
There were just so many questions. What is Freddy's weakness? Why can't he be killed? How is it he is able to enter dreams? What did he want?  
  
Punishment.revenge.justice.all of these words came up at one point or anther. To punish him for murder they murdered him. For revenge he killed their children. For justice they fought him again, and again.  
  
"He is running out of options." Alice said suddenly. Neil looked down at her as he lay another bone. "He is running out of ways to reach us. He is running out of fear. He has killed all those who believed in him, that remembered him except us and the parents with their dirty little secrets and still it's always us having to fight him, us having to clean up his mess."  
  
"Tiny sacrifices." He whispered. Alice looked up at Neil.  
  
"Exactly, we are sacrifices." She realized. She dug harder in to the ground as she thought about it. "We are their sacrifices to keep their secrets; acceptable losses."  
  
"Alice I'm sure their parents didn't mean for this."  
  
"I don't care, I'm tired of running." She threw her shovel down and began to cry.  
  
"I have spent the last 10 years trying to find a way of saving you all, but I'm running out of options myself." He pleaded crawling down in the grave with her and holding her. "Amanda told me that the angry spirit needed to be laid to rest, and I thought I did, but a junk yard is hardly hallowed ground. Please Alice, help me end this. We will bury her here, and then take him to his plot and bury him as well."  
  
Alice stopped crying and looked up at him. "He didn't have a plot." She said. "He was burned and ."  
  
"He has a plot, Alice." He explained. "I found it in the police reports. Plot number 5783437."  
  
A relief fell over Alice then. He had a name, he had a body, he had a plot, he had an end. She hugged Neil and looked up and Amanda's bones. "Let's bury her like she should have been." She said. Neil nodded and they crawled out of the grave. Then taking the old habit in hand they lowered her down in to the grave. Then crawling out of grave again they both stood at the foot. Neil reached in to his pocket and removed an old flask. Alice looked at him strangely. He didn't explain his actions, but rather he held the flask up and began to pray.  
  
"Here lays Sister Amanda Krueger, known in Christ as Sister Mary Helena. May she join the Father in heaven. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall feel no evil, for thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. My cup runneth over. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil and I will dwell in the house of the lord forever." He then splashed the water inside the flask down upon the bones. "Ashes and ashes, dust to dust." Then Alice and Neil watched as a bright light shown from the bones, and in a burst of light vanished, down inside the grave the bones of Amanda Krueger turned to dust.  
  
"Oh my God!" Alice gasped. "That's more then just bourbon in there isn't it?"  
  
"Holy Water." He replied, and kissed the flask and put it in his pocket. "The soul he could not claim has been set free." 


	26. Chapter 24 Small Sacrifices

Chapter 24.1  
Small Sacrifices  
  
Inside her fevered dream Melissa ran. She ran from one dreamscape to another. Freddy on her heals at every step. She stopped at a quick halt when she noticed herself going around in circles. She stood in a hospital hall way then. It was clean, dark and quiet, but for a whimper coming from a near by door. She listened carefully and walked to it. She peered inside the small glass window and saw a young girl huddled in a corner. Melissa took hold of the handle and pulled, but the door was locked. She tapped on the window.  
  
"Hey!" she called. "Hello?" but the girl didn't acknowledge she was there. Instead she stayed curled up crying. Then she watched as she saw Freddy materialize in the corner behind the girl.  
  
"Hey!" Melissa screamed. "Wake up! Behind you! Wake up!" but the girl didn't seem to hear her.  
  
Freddy walked to the glass and stared at Melissa from behind his. "I can't hurt you, but that doesn't mean I can kill them." He growled.  
  
"No!" Melissa screamed and pulled on the door. She watched as Freddy snuck up behind the girl, knowing full well she couldn't see him or hear him, and taunted Melissa by putting his claw right next to her but not killing her. He just watched as Melissa tried to knock on the door. She may have been strong enough to escape her own nightmare, but now she was trapped in someone else's, and couldn't fight back.  
  
"NO!" she screamed again. "Leave her alone you bastard!" she grabbed hold of the door and thought hard. The metal groaned as she pulled. She imagined the metal bending, and in her hand the lock squeaked as she pulled even harder.  
  
Freddy stood and looked at the door as it began to bow from the strength Melissa gave it. He looked at it curiously. 'What the hell is happening?' he thought. Then he saw the wall burst away and door fly back. When the debris stopped falling he looked up and saw Melissa standing there, sweat pouring off her face, her hair damp with perspiration and she looked pissed.  
  
"I said.leave her alone." She growled with equal anger to his own.  
  
Freddy backed away from the girl and dissolved in to the matted wall. Melissa walked over to the girl and knelt down next to her. She reached out and put her hand on the girls shoulder. "Hey, are you okay?" she asked. The girl spun around and Melissa saw her face half burned away, the scorched flesh hanging across her eye. "Never better" the voice growled in her throat. Suddenly the girl was Freddy and he had Melissa caught by the arms.  
  
"Crazy little bitch!" he screamed. "I gave you a little too much power."  
  
"You didn't give me shit!" She screamed in return. Freddy gripped her arms and the room suddenly caught fire and burned away around them leaving her back inside the boiler room. "The beginning shall be your end asshole!" And Freddy punched her hard.  
  
"Time to show you a little trick." He said and laid her down, and then slowly he lay on top of her and dissolved into her skin. Melissa convulsed on the floor as she began to lose consciousness.  
  
When Freddy opened her eyes, he found himself staring in to the back of the seats inside Neil's car. He turned slightly in the seat, he could feel Melissa's bones hurting. 'Better lay off the punches.' he thought to himself. He could feel every ache from where he had beat Melissa down.  
  
In the front seat of the car he heard the doors open and Alice and Neil get in. quietly he lay still and listened as they started the car and inched the car around the cemetery.  
  
"Which one is it?" Alice asked. Freddy looked up and saw the back of her strawberry blond hear. He so badly just wanted to reach up and bash her head in, but it was too soon to give himself away. He decided just to listen.  
  
"That one at the end. I scouted it out weeks ago." Neil answered. "I already prepped it for us. I didn't want to leave anything to chance."  
  
"It's already been dug?" she asked.  
  
"Yeah, not many people come this way. I was glad of that. I was able to dig it up, make sure it was empty."  
  
"good." Alice replied.  
  
Freddy inched his wrist through the ropes that bound him. He felt as the car went over a bump, then violently pressed Melissa's thumb down, breaking the bone. The shock of feeling her pain caught him off guard and he let a slight scream, with Melissa's voice. Alice turned quickly as Freddy lay lifeless again on the seat.  
  
"God! What is he doing to her in there?" she asked.  
  
"Well we know he can't kill her, just be glad of that." Neil said as he slowed the car and put it in to park. He and Alice got back out of the car and circled around to the trunk. When he knew he was again alone, Freddy pulled his hand out of the ropes and pulled his hand in front of him and began to untie his feet. The palm of his hand began to turn purple from the bruising broken bone underneath, but he knew it was all well. 'I don't feel it.' He thought. 'I don't feel.'  
  
He sat up and grinned. Carefully he inched over the seat to the front of the car. He glanced up as he saw Alice and Neil walk to a tarp covered grave. When he was sure they were not looking he reached for the wheel to help pull himself over, but that is when he noticed the sack in Alice's hand. 'No..it couldn't be.' he thought. Then he watched as they pulled the tarp off the grave and he saw his name etched in to the stone. He looked around and saw they were inside the cemetery, and he almost could feel the panic of Melissa's heart as he saw them toss the bag of bones in the ground. He fell back in to the seat and with a quick movement kicked open the door of the car.  
  
He stepped out and looked over at them. Anger boiled in his veins, they were endangering his plan for absolute revenge, and he wasn't going to let them get away with it.  
  
"Melissa?" Alice asked looking back as she heard the car door slam shut again. Freddy looked down, almost forgetting he was inside Melissa's body, but he knew once he had complete control he couldn't hid in her forever. He tried to use her voice, but as he began to say 'hello' he could hear his deep burned voice inside. He couldn't get away with it like that. "Melissa, it's almost over." And Alice turned back to the grave as Neil again to the flask and began to prey.  
  
"NO!" Freddy roared and ran towards them pushing Alice in the grave and turning to Neil. Neil then saw the burning eyes of Freddy's inside Melissa's.  
  
"You!" Neil exclaimed as she saw the evil inside the young girl.  
  
"Yes." Freddy replied in his own voice. "Long time no see, too bad I didn't kill you then, would have saved me a lot of trouble."  
  
Neil held up the bottle of holy water and looked down in to the grave; Alice had landed on the bones and had been knocked unconscious. He looked back at Freddy who smiled seeing he could not bless the bones. Instead Neil made a quick movement and splashed Freddy in the face with the water. Freddy grabbed his face and screamed, but put them down quickly and smiled. He was not harmed by the water inside Melissa's body, for the water could not reach his soul which lay underneath.  
  
Neil grabbed his shovel and swung it hard at Freddy who jumped away. He swung it again and Freddy reached out and smacked the shovel back towards Neil. Neil lost his grip and dropped the shovel. Then from behind them another shovel landed hard on Freddy's head. Melissa's body fell hard to the ground. Alice threw the shovel back in to the ground and looked up at Neil. "I've got to help her." Alice pleaded. "There has been enough sacrificed for this rancid soul." Neil looked down in the grave. Destroying the bones would not help with his soul inside Melissa's body. He would lose them both if the tried to kill him now and the nightmare would not end. He nodded to Alice who reached down and checked Melissa's pulse.  
  
"Her heart's beating."  
  
"Let's try at least."  
  
Neil looked down at the bones and took his flask. He prayed and blessed the bones. Unlike Amanda's they didn't turn to dust. He watched as they began to glow, but suddenly stopped, and from beneath them blood began to saturate the surface of them. Melissa's body flinched and struggled. Alice looked down at her and reached to her face. She shook her and slapped her face.  
  
"Wake up!" Alice screamed. Neil pulled her away from Melissa as she struggled in her dream. Blood spurted from her mouth and her eyes opened, white filmed and bloodshot. Away from the body watched as the bones in the grave bleed more, more blood then bones could hold.  
  
Then the light filled Melissa and the bones. From her pain stricken face she gritted her teeth and let the evil burn. Her skin began to blister and redden. Then with all the strength she could muster she called out to Freddy's soul. "The beginning shall be your end!" she screamed loud then. From inside her the scream turned, deepened, and became more ragged, until it was the unmistakable tone of Freddy Krueger.  
  
The bones below caught aflame and Melissa's cloths began to smoke. Alice tried to reach for her to help her but Neil held her back. Melissa's whole body burst in to flames and in a blinding light her body began to burn like paper, and as quickly as it had begun, it ended. In a burst of energy the bones in the grave turned to ash, Melissa's remains too. The sudden blast caused Alice and Neil to fall back away from the grave. It took them a moment to even realize they were still alive. Then when they did, they looked up and saw smoking spot where Melissa had been, and looked in to the grave and saw the razor glove burn away, the blades dissolved and soak in to hell. Around them they watched as the smoke began to thicken around them from the grave. Then they saw them, as though formed from the smoke. It was the forms of the souls who had died. Alice and Neil could make out the faced of Nancy, Kristen, and many others they had known who had been claimed by Krueger's hate. Then a gust of wind came, parting the smoke, clearing the grave yard to where only they stood there. 


	27. Epilogue 10

Epilogue

Alice pulled the blankets up around her sleeping son's neck and kissed his cheek. She was home now, away from Springwood, and away from Freddy. He was dead now, his soul burned as it should have been years before. Dr. Gordon had been such a help the last few months, keeping her informed of the improving conditions of all Gina Keller's other patience. So far, it was like nothing ever happened.

She only wished she had been able to rescue Melissa, or at least her memory. The connection with her mother and the Krueger murders made people speculate weather or not it had actually been Gina Keller the killer of the children way back when. Had Gina been the real murder? And Freddy an innocent tortured soul she exploited? Then had Melissa been her mother's daughter, having killed those kids, her mother, and finally herself? That is what the papers had a field day on since she had taken them to Melissa's charred remains. Only a few teeth and bone were left to identify her, but it was enough. The blood in her house, her finger prints on the scissors, the kids at 1429 Elm. It was so far from the truth it almost made Alice laugh.

Still Alice was haunted by her feelings of loss. She often dreamt of seeing Melissa, on a bright sunny day sitting on the edge of Krueger's grave. Dressed in white as the children had been, throwing rose petals down on to the ashes of Freddy. Alice sees herself walking to her, apologizing for her unable to protect her, and then sees her turn around, her face half alive, the other burned like his, and she wakes up screaming. Alice cringed at the memory of this dream and walked in to her bedroom. She crawled in to the covers and rests her head against her pillow. The flashes of Melissa's burned face echo back at her. She takes no chances.

Carefully she took a bottle of pills by her bed, a 'special' prescription Neil had given her, said it could have saved them all. She took the pills and lay back down, her eyes closed.

The dream begins. She is next to the grave, a bright sunny day; Melissa sits at its edge. "Melissa?" Alice asks to the sitting girl. "I'm sorry." And the dream ends.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

Previously this story was to have alternant endings. This idea was scrapped years ago after the final chapter was written, and i saw Freddy Vs Jason (yuck). I still have my other ideas and may post them some other time, but not now. If you liked this story please say so. I may write more. Thanks.


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